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RHODE ISLAND 

ITS MAKING AND ITS MEANING 



A Survey of the Annals of the Commonwealth from its 
Settlement to the Death of Roger Williams 

1636-1683 



BY 

IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

JAMES BRYCE, M.P., D.C.L. 

AUTHOR OF "the AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH*' 



VOLUME I 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbe Iknickerbocl^ec press 

1902 



THF LIBRARY OF 
CONf?RESS, 

Two Copttts fltosivEn 

NOV, 'it 1902 

fl!n»VBIOMT ENTfTY 

CLASS-^'XXo No. 

cory B. 



Copyright, 1902 

BY 

IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN 



tCbe ftnicberbocfceir press, t^ew Xfork 



^ 



FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN 



INTRODUCTION 

RHODE ISLAND is the smallest by far of all 
the States of the American Union; it has an 
area of only 1085 square miles, less than 
that of the County of Ayr in Scotland. But within 
this narrow space, and with a population which was 
until in recent years but slender, Providence grew 
into a great manufacturing city and Newport be- 
came the favorite home of wealth and luxury. 
Rhode Island has had a singularly interesting and 
eventful history, all the more interesting because 
in a tiny community the play of personal forces 
is best seen and the characters of individual men 
give color to the strife of principles and parties.- 
Thus some touch of that dramatic quality which 
belongs to the cities of Greece and Italy recurs in 
this little republic on Narragansett Bay. Unlike 
in many ways as were the settlers who went forth 
from England under the Stuarts to the Greeks of 
two thousand years earlier, some of the questions 
which troubled both were the same, and bore fruits 
not wholly dissimilar. Nor are points of likeness 
wanting to the history of some of the older cantons 
of Switzerland. 

Mr. Richman, who is favorably known to stu- 



vi Introduction 

dents of history by his book on Appenzell, has 
essayed in the present volumes to chronicle the for- 
tunes of Rhode Island in its earlier days. The 
peculiar interest of those days lies in the fact that 
this colony was in a special sense the offspring and 
the embodiment of certain distinctive and novel 
ideas in the sphere of religion and politics. This 
character it owes to one man. Roger Williams, 
born just three centuries ago (probably in a.d. 1603), 
was the founder of Rhode Island in a clearer and 
ampler sense than any other single man — scarcely 
excepting William Penn — was the founder of any 
other American colony ; for he gave it a set of 
principles which, so far as the New World was 
concerned, were peculiarly his own, and these 
principles long continued to affect its collective life. 
The men of Virginia were ordinary Englishmen of 
the class then dominant in England. The men 
of Massachusetts and Connecticut were Puritans 
of the normal seventeenth-century type, earnest 
and God-fearing, but almost as ready to persecute 
heretical opinions as they had found the church of 
Archbishop Laud ready to persecute them. Roger 
Williams had a new doctrine. In point of doctrine 
he seems to have been an orthodox Puritan, grifted 
with a double portion of the dissidence of dissent, 
although so " lovely in his carriage" that the hostility 
he roused did not take the form of hatred to him- 
self personally. ^But he was the first apostle in 
New England of the theory of absolute freedom 
for the individual in matters of religion, with the 
consequent denial of the right of the civil magis- 



Introduction vii 

trate to intermeddle in any wise with such matters. 
He was not the first discoverer of this great and 
wholesome principle, for isolated voices had for a 
century before his time uttered it in more or less 
explicit terms. But he was so much the most 
zealous and active exponent of it in America, and 
Rhode Island was so conspicuously the first colony 
to apply it in practice, that he and his community 
deserve to be honored by those who hold that one 
of the chief services which the United States has 
rendered to the world consists in the example set 
there of a complete disjunction of religious worship 
and belief from the machinery of civil government. 

Upon this foundation, and upon the cognate 
principle of the fullest recognition of the rights of 
the individual in the civil sphere also, the common- 
wealth of Rhode Island was built, and thus it be- 
came the refuge of those who sought to escape from 
the grim stringency of the Massachusetts Theocracy. 
Roger Williams was in a sense before his time; and 
he may not in some respects have fully appreciated 
the results of his own principles. But the prin- 
ciples spread and the work told, though in Europe, 
with its solid mass of institutions inherited from 
the middle ages, no great progress was made till 
the spirit of political revolt and the spirit of critical 
inquiry came in to quicken the march of ideas. 

A no less honorable and scarcely less important 
part of Williams's doctrines was his recognition of 
the right of the native Indians to their lands. His 
respect for their rights, his wish to deal fairly and 
live peaceably with the aborigines are among the 



viii Introduction 

most attractive features of his character and entitle 
him to be numbered in the noble band to which 
Las Casas and Penn and Wilberforce belongr. 

The story of the beginnings of Rhode Island is 
full of varied interest and Mr. Richman tells it well. 
He delineates Roger Williams with insight and 
with sympathy. He sets clearly before us the con- 
ditions under which the little community started 
on its long and chequered course. The enormous 
changes which have passed in America during the 
last sixty years do not diminish — indeed, they 
rather increase — the value of a study of the days 
wherein the foundations of this mighty edifice were 
raised. 

We live in a time of great States, when the right 
of small nations to exist is arrogantly denied by 
those who do not comprehend the worth of variety 
and of free individual development. But it ought to 
be remembered that down till the sixteenth century 
almost all the work we still prize in literature, in 
art, in philosophy and in religion, as well as in the 
creation of institutions, had been done by the citi- 
zens of small cities or by the members of small 
tribes. The gigantic nations of to-day, highly 
vitalized as they are by facilities of communication 
and transport, do not produce what Athens and 
Florence produced in the centuries of their prime. 

James Bryce. 

London, August i, 1902. 



PREFACE 

THE title selected for the following pages, — 
Rhode Island, its Making and its Meaning, 
— is not a mere matter of words. The 
meaning of Rhode Island (to speak of that first) is, 
I take it, clear and precise. It is primarily that 
Roger Williams, and the commonwealth which he 
founded, established earlier and more fully than 
any other man or community the principle of Free- 
dom of Conscience in religion ; and in the next 
place it is that Rhode Island itself established 
earlier and more fully than any other community 
the political principle of Individualism, — a principle 
since better known as that of the Rights of Man. 

It will be observed that a distinction is here 
drawn between the work performed chiefly by 
Roger Williams and that performed chiefly by 
Rhode Island. Williams understood the whole 
subject of Freedom of Conscience in religion. It 
has not been found possible to add anything to his 
exposition of this subject. But while this is true, 
Williams did not understand some things which 
were involved in and corollary to his doctrine of 
Soul Liberty, and which were worked out through 
much storm and stress by the commonwealth which 



X Preface 

he founded. That is to say, he did not (as is shown 
at Chapter XL) understand the bearings of Soul 
Liberty in the poHtical domain. Rhode Island, how- 
ever, did understand these bearings, and the con- 
sequence is that to the principle of religious freedom 
(which by nearly universal consent is placed to the 
credit of Rhode Island) there must be added the de- 
rived though no less weighty principle of political 
freedom expressed in the doctrine of the Rights of 
Man and of the Individual : that doctrine which 
came to underlie both the American War for Inde- 
pendence and the great Revolution in France.^ 

So much for the meaning of Rhode Island. A 
word now as to its making. This, — as will be seen, 
— was a process both slow and tortuous. Freedom 
of Conscience, even in religion, was not at first 
formally recognized on Aquidneck ; and as for the 
Rights of Man and of the Individual, that principle 
was only established amid a series of jarring scenes 

' Dr. Georg Jellinek of the University of Heidelberg says in his essay, 
"The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens" (translated into 
English last year): " The right of the liberty of conscience was proclaimed 
by Roger Williams and with it came the conception of a universal right of 
man." Again he says : " With the conviction that there existed a right of 
conscience independent of the State was found the starting point for the 
determination of the inalienable rights of the individual." 

It is the thesis of Dr. Jellinek that the authors of the French Revolution 
derived their idea of the Rights of Man not from European philosophers or 
from the American Declaration of Independence, but from the charters 
of the English colonies in America. These charters contained assertions 
of inalienable rights all growing out of the basic right of Soul Liberty or 
Freedom of Conscience. The Doctor emphatically avers: "What has 
been held to be a work of the [French] Revolution [the establishing of in- 
herent and sacred rights of the individual] was in reality a fruit of the Ref- 
ormation and its struggles. Its first apostle was not Lafayette but Roger 
Williams." 



Preface xi 

in which the propelling forces were Anne Hutchin- 
son and Samuel Gorton, and the restraining ones, 
William Coddington, John Clarke, and Roger 
Williams. 

In the preparation of the book herewith sub- 
mitted to the public, I have been aided with great 
kindness and patience by Mr. William E. Foster, 
librarian of the Providence Public Library ; Mr. 
Clarence S. Brigham, librarian of the Rhode Island 
Historical Society ; Mr. George Parker Winship, 
librarian of the John Carter Brown Library ; Mr. 
H. L. Koopman, librarian of Brown University; 
Mr. Edward Field, clerk of the Providence Muni- 
cipal Court ; Mr. George T. Paine of Providence, 
Mr. William P. Sheffield, Jr., of Newport, and Mr. 
Reuben G. Thwaites and Miss Florence E. Baker 
of the Historical Society at Madison, Wis. 

I. B. R. 

Muscatine, Iowa, 

September, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PACE 

Introduction by James Bryce . . . v 

rhode island founded and perpetuated 

I. The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Wil- 
liams ........ 3 

II. The Expulsion of the Antinomians . . 34 

III. Roger Williams and the Narragansett 

Indians ....... 63 

the principle of freedom of conscience 
in religion made by rhode island its cor- 
ner-stone, and the struggle for political 
individualism begun. 

IV. The Mainland and the Island 

I. the mainland : providence — Warwick . 83 
II. the island: Portsmouth — Newport . 117 

V. Early Rhode Island Government as Re- 
vealed IN THE Land Systems of Provi- 
dence AND AqUIDNECK .... 152 

TOLERA TION FOR FREEDOM OF CONSCINCE IN 
RHODE ISLAND CONCEDED BY THE ENGLISH 
GOVERNMENT, AND MASSACHUSETTS DEFEA TED 
IN ITS A TTEMPT TO EXTINGUISH RHODE ISLAND 
HERESY. 

VI. Roger Williams in England — The Patent 

OF 1644 and Death of Miantonomi . . 165 



XIV 

CHAPTER 



Contents 



VII. Roger Williams in England [continued] — 

The Harrying of the Gortonists . . 197 



POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM GRANTED LARGE 
RECOGNITION IN THE FIRST RHODE ISLAND CON- 
STITUTION, BUT SOUGHT TO BE CHECKED IN 
ITS ADVANCE BY WILLIAM CODDINGTON. 



VIII. Organization of Providence Plantations 

and Death of Canonicus .... 233 



Rhode Island Founded and Perpetuated 



CHAPTER I 

THE PURITAN THEOCRACY AND ROGER WILLIAMS 

RHODE ISLAND may be described as the 
reactionary offspring of Massachusetts. In 
order, therefore, to understand Rhode Island 
history in its early period, it will be necessary to 
take into consideration certain facts connected 
with the founding of the parent commonwealth. 
These facts are two : first, that Massachusetts in 
its inception was that distinctively secular institu- 
tion, a company of English capitalists, corporately 
organized for trade under a charter which set forth 
with more or less completeness the powers, privi- 
leges, and capacities of the company ; and second, 
that notwithstanding this, Massachusetts, almost 
immediately upon its erection upon the shores 
whence its name was derived, became a Theocracy, 
— a Church-State ^ fairly dividing honors with 
Judea of old in the rigorous assiduity with which 
it strove to serve the Lord day and night. 

' " It was a Church of Christ which settled on these shores in 1628 and 
the following years. . . . The State was an outgrowth from the 
Church, was its offspring and its handmaid. ... It was literally true 
that the State was only the Church acting in secular and civil affairs." — 
John A. Vinton, Cong. Quarterly, 1873, p. 407. 

3 



4 Early Rhode Island 

The second fact suggests irresistibly the conclu- 
sion, that whatever the artificial form vouchsafed 
by Charles I. to the Massachusetts Company, the 
real object of the members — an object none the 
less real that it may have been but vaguely com- 
prehended by the greater part — was to escape 
royal and priestly domination, and, as noted by the 
Governor, John Winthrop, on the voyage over, 
" to seek out a place of cohabitation and consort- 
ship under a due form of government both civil 
and ecclesiastical." ^ It does not follow, however, 
that, because the real object of the Puritans was as 
stated, the fact of their organization as a trading 
company was without effect upon their subsequent 
course and polity. The charter provided for a 
Governor, a Deputy Governor, and eighteen As- 
sistants to be elected annually from the " freemen " 
of the company ; for four annual company meet- 
ings called "great, general, and solemn assemblies " 
(familiar later on as assemblies of the General 
Court) ; and for monthly meetings of the Governor 
(or Deputy Governor) with at least seven Assist- 
ants, as a Court of Magistracy. Moreover, among 
the very considerable powers conferred upon the 
company by the charter was the power to make 
laws and ordinances not repugnant to the laws of 
England ; the power to admit new associates upon 
terms to be prescribed by the company itself ; and 
the power " to expulse all such person and persons 

' This was clearly the object, after the reorganization of the company in 
1629 and the election of Winthrop to the governorship. — Dr. Geo. E. Ellis, 
Puritan Age, p. 50. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 5 

as should at anytime attempt or enterprise detriment 
or annoyance to their plantation or its inhabitants." ^ 
And, while it evidently was not intended by 
the English Government in conferring the above 
powers to place a sword in the hands of the Puri- 
tans to be used in protecting their corporation, as a 
Theocracy, against spiritual assaults ; and while, 
therefore, the argument of their apologists, that 
they as a Theocracy possessed the same legal 
rights in the way of " expulsion " as they would 
have possessed had they chosen to remain a busi- 
ness corporation, falls to the ground^; still the 
Puritans themselves — with just what admixture of 
sincerity and guile it is difficult to say — certainly 



' Preston, Documents Illustrative of American History, p. 59. 

^ At the period treated of, colonies were looked upon, in government 
circles at least, as institutions essentially for pecuniary profit (Davis, New 
England States, iv., 2461). The statement therefore becomes almost a truism, 
that, as originally constituted, the company of Massachusetts Bay was a 
trading concern like the Hudson's Bay or the East India Company. The 
privileges granted under its charter were, as Mr. Charles Deane has well 
said, those "usually allowed to corporations in England" {Proc. Mass. 
Hist. Soc, Dec, 1869, p. 174 ei seq.). The charter, however, while 
framed to secure exclusive trade privileges, was not so framed as to 
authorize the exclusion from the company's territory of British subjects 
willing to respect these privileges. "All . . . the subjects of Us," 
the instrument recites, . . , "which shall goe to and inhabite within 
the saide Landes, shall have and enjoy all liberties and Immunities of free 
and naturall subjects within any of the Dominyons of Us," etc. No 
wonder Mr. Brooks Adams is moved to say in The Emancipation of Massa- 
chusetts (p. 59): " Her [Mass.'] commercial privileges alone were exclu- 
sive, and, provided he respected them, a British subject had the same right 
to dwell in Massachusetts as in any of the other dominions of the Crown." 
It is worthy of remark that the views above set forth meet with the sanc- 
tion of the English historian of New England, Mr. J. A. Doyle. He 
writes {The Ena. Cols, in Am., vol. ii., p. gi) : "It would seem as 
though the functions of the Company were to be confined to managing the 
trade and the material welfare of the settlement." 



6 Early Rhode Island 

did avail themselves of the strict letter of their 
civil constitution as sanctioning both their exclu- 
siveness and the infliction of their favorite penalty 
of banishment. ^ 

The formal organization of Massachusetts as a 
Theocracy or Church-State may be said to have 
taken place in the month of October, 165 1, when 
the General Court voted " to give their testimony 
to the book of discipline " which had been 
adopted by the Synod, held in Cambridge three 
years before. But as the Synod only put the seal 
of authority upon what, in the language of the 
General Court, " we have practiced and doe be- 
lieve," it is evident that the real compacting of the 
Theocracy was of an earlier time. The first step 
(which was taken at the first session of the Massa- 
chusetts General Court, held August 23, 1630) w^as 
the following-, as set forth in the court records : 

" Impr., it was propounded, howe the ministers should be 
mayntayned. ... It was ordered that houses be built for 
them at the publique charge. ... It was propounded, 
what should be their maynetenance. [After specifying the 
quantity of meat, money, etc., it is added], all this to be att the 
common charge, those of Mattapan and Salem only exempted."* 

' " They [the Puritans] had as much right and the same right [under 
their charter] to do what they did, as a Lodge of Free Masons, going on an 
excursion into the Adirondack woods, would have to say distinctly that 
tickets will be issued to none but members of the order, their families and 
invited guests." — Dr. H. M. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last 
Three Hundred Years as Seen in its Literature, p. 420. See also Dr. Dex- 
ter, As to Roger Williams, p. iS ; Palfrey, JVew England, vol. i., pp. 299- 
300, 3S7 ; Dr. Joel Parker, Massachusetts as Seen in its Early History 
(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1869) pp. 393-394 ; H. C. Lodge, Short 
History of the English Colonies in America, p. 348. 

^ Mass. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 73. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 7 

The second step (taken May 18, 1631) was in 
the language of the court : " It is ordered that 
henceforth noe man shall be admitted to the free- 
dome of this Commonwealth but such as are mem- 
bers of the churches within the limits of this 
jurisdiction." ^ A third step was the order of 
court, made March 4, 1634-35, that every inhabit- 
ant must attend church services on the Lord's 
Day under penalty of a fine of ^s. (equivalent to 
about $5.00 now) or of imprisonment.^ A fourth 
step was the request by the General Court in 
March, 1634-35, that the elders and brethren of 
every church within the court's jurisdiction consult 
together concerning ** one uniform order of disci- 
pline," and " howe farr the magistrates are bound 
to interpose for the preservation of that uniformity 
and peace of the churches."^ A fifth step was the 
enactment in March, 1635-36, that no church should 
be formed without the " approbacion " of the " mag- 
istrates and of the greater parte of the churches 
in this jurisdiction," and further, that " noe per- 
son being , a member of any church gathered 
without the approbacion of the magistrates and of 
the greater parte of the churches in this jurisdic- 
tion, shall be admitted to the ffreedome of this 
Commonwealthe."^ A sixth step — and one amount- 
ing to a direct reply to the query propounded by 
the General Court in March, 1634-35 — was the 
advice of the ministers, given in March, 1637-38, 
apropos of the Antinomian agitation, " that in all 

' Mass. Co.. Rec, vol. i., p. 87. ^ Ibid., p. 140. 

^ Ibid., pp. 142-143. *Ibid., p. 168. 



8 Early Rhode Island 

such heresies or errors of any church members as 
are manifest and dangerous to the State, the Court 
may proceed without tarrying for the Church."^ 

The leading mind concerned in developing the 
Theocracy on the lines thus indicated was the Rev. 
John Cotton, lately rector of St. Botolph's, Bos- 
ton, England, who came to Massachusetts in 1633, 
and whose personality and history will engage our 
attention as we proceed. In Cotton's opinion, 
" very much of an Athenian Democracy was in 
the mould of the government by the royal charter," 
and disapproving of this he suggested, in the words 
of Cotton Mather, " an endeavor after a Theocracy 
as near as might be to that which was the glory of 
Israel, 'the peculiar people.'" His labors to this 
end were highly effectual, for by his influence — 
and against some questioning in the matter from 
time to time on the part of the "deputies," or 
"third estate," in the General Court — it was 
promptly brought about that the constitution and 
statutes of Massachusetts consisted in the Bible, 
and not in the royal charter and Orders in Coun- 
cil" ; a consummation which made the clergy, acting 
together, — in other words, the Puritan Church, — ■ 
necessarily the dominant element in the State ; for 
the Bible, like other legal codes (and more than 
most) required interpretation ; and for this who so 
fit as the clergy ? ^ 

' Winthrop's yournal, i., 214. 

' In May, 1636, Cotton prepared a Biblical Code at the request of a com- 
mittee appointed by the General Court. This code, entitled ' ' Moses his Judi- 
cials," although never formally adopted, was accepted in spirit by the court. 

* " By law the civic government [in Massachusetts] was distinct from the 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 9 

But to return to the Cambridge Synod. This 
body was assembled in September, 1646, in re- 
sponse to the "desire" of the General Court. A 
committee on " platform " was appointed, consist- 
ing of John Cotton, Richard Mather, and Ralph 
Partridge, — the latter of Plymouth, — and an ad- 
journment taken. It was not until August, 1648, 
that the Synod was able to reassemble for busi- 
ness. When it did so, a draught of a "platform" 
which had been prepared by Mather, and to which 
Cotton, but not the Plymouth delegate, subscribed, 
was submitted and in substance adopted. The 
leading theocratic pronouncement of this "plat- 
form " as adopted by the Synod is contained in 
the seventeenth chapter, and stands thus : The civil 
magistrate " ought to improve his civil authority for 
the observing of the duties commanded in the first, 
as well as for observing of the duties commanded 
in the second, table [of the Decalogue] " ^ ; he 
ought to exercise himself to command the per- 
formance, and chastise the neglect, of " such acts 
as are commanded & forbidden in the word " ; he 
ought " to restrain and punish " idolatry, blasphemy, 
heresy, and the venting of opinions that destroy 

ecclesiastical, but in fact it was strictly subordinate to it. Owing to their 
moral influence, the pastors and elders formed a sort of Council of Ephors : 
no important decision was arrived at without their consent. They spoke 
in the name of the Divine Will revealed in the Bible, and their sentence 
could only be appealed against by calling in question their interpretation." 
— Charles Borgeaud, The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New Eng- 
land, p. 148. 

'The "first table" comprised the first four Commandments — those 
specifically referring to man's duties toward God as distinguished from 
man's duties toward man. 



lO Early Rhode Island 

the foundations, open contempt of the Word 
preached, the profanation of the Sabbath, disturb- 
ance of pubHc worship, etc.; and he should "put 
forth his coercive .power, as the matter shall re- 
quire, in case a church become schismatical, or 
walke incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt 
way of their own, contrary to the rule of the word." ^ 
Here, then, we have an absolutely authoritative 
statement of what the Puritan Commonwealth was 
from the first, — from the period 1630- 163 7, — by 
which time the Massachusetts Company had pretty 
effectually got rid of whatever traces of a trading 
organization it retained after the transfer of its 
charter to this side of the Atlantic ; and, according 
to this statement, the commonwealth was a Theo- 
cracy wherein the civil magistrate (as a matter of 
course) was to punish "heresy" and "the venting 
of opinions." Unless, therefore, we are prepared 
to indulge the amiable but altogether idle supposi- 
tion that the Puritan magistrate was inclined to 
shirk the performance of his duty, we may assert 
with great positiveness what the Massachusetts 
historians have as a rule been exceedingly loath to 
admit, namely, that not only were persons punished 
in early Massachusetts for offences against the 
civil power, but also for heresy and opinions qud 
opinions!^ 

' Mather, ATagnalia, Book V., Part ii., par. 3; Dexter, Congregationalism 
as St't'n in its Literature, p. 444. 

^ The following instance (December l, 1640) is striking {Mass, Col. Rec, 
vol. i., p. 312) : " The jury found Hugh Buet [subsequently a resident of 
R. I.] to bee gilty of heresy & that his person and errors are dangeros 
for infection of others. It was ordered that the said Hugh Buet should bee 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 1 1 

Indeed, upon slight reflection it will be seen that 
in a Theocracy or Church-State it is impossible for 
it to be otherwise than that opinions, as such, 
should form a ground of punishment. The Theoc- 
racy itself consists in opinions, — opinions about 
God and a future life ; opinions whereon is thought 
to depend the only hope of human salvation from 
the wrath to come, but which at the same time are 
utterly incapable of verification, and which, if they 
are to stand, must be sedulously protected against 
the destructive force of other and contrary opin- 
ions. A secular State may be menaced by war, 
rebellion, and intrigue, but a Theocracy is put in 
deadly peril by every wind of doctrine. It conse- 
quently is the most difficult of all forms of polity to 
keep from falling away from the mark. Where a 
secular State encounters only foes of flesh and 
blood, a Theocracy contends against the very 
powers of the air. It is no wonder that a Theoc- 
racy persecutes ; it is put in fear by the unseen 
character of that with which it fights, and, being in 
fear, it is at once blind and pitiless.^ 

So much regrardine the rise of the Massachusetts 
Theocracy. This Theocracy, having got itself fairly 
in working order, was now about to be challenged. 

As early as the fifteenth century Peter Chilcicky, 

gone out of o' jurisdiction by the 24th present upon paine of death, & not 
to returne upon paine of being hanged." 

' The ecclesiastical state of Geneva under John Calvin may be taken as 
illustrative of the general proposition. "Calvin's object," says Robert 
Barclay {Inner Life of the Religious Sects, p. 17), "was to found a State 
resembling that of the Israelites under Moses, and the result was one of the 
most fearful ecclesiastical tyrannies to which mankind has been subjected." 



1 2 Early Rhode Island 

spiritual father of the Bohemian Brethren, denied 
the rightfulness of any union of Church and State. 
Just before the outbreak of the Lutheran Reforma- 
tion, in the following century, the Anabaptists^ 
of Germany appeared, making the same denial. 
Among those calling themselves Anabaptists at this 
time, however, were various bands of fanatics claim- 
ing the merit of direct inspiration, and maintain- 
ing that, provided the individual were assured of the 
indwelling of God's Spirit, it made little or no 
difference about conduct. As a result, there broke 
forth in 1535, in the city of Miinster, which had 
been taken possession of by the fanatics under Jan 
Matthys and John of Leyden, a wild reign of 
superstition and debauchery ; an occurrence which 
made the name "Anabaptist" thenceforth a synonym 
throughout Christendom for all that was criminal 
and anarchistic. In 1 536 the apostate monk, Menno 
Simons, allied himself with the Anabaptists properly 
so called, and took up the advocacy of their idea 
of religious lilrerty as involved in the tenet of the 
separation of Church and State. Menno was a 
Hollander, and during the years of persecution in 
Europe which followed upon the Miinster episode 
many of his disciples, called Mennonites, fled to 
England, where they found a considerable number 
of other Dutch Anabaptists settled about Norwich. 
This Norwich settlement continued to grow until, 
in 1 57 1, it contained nearly four thousand persons.^ 

' Anabaptist, from the verb avafiaitri'^fiv , to rebaptize. 
' By actual count 3925. Bloomfield's Hist. County Norfolk, vol. iii., pp. 
282, 291. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 1 3 

Now in 1580, Robert Browne, a kinsman of Lord 
Burghley, and graduate of Corpus Christi College, 
Cambridge, went to Norwich and formed what is 
regarded by modern Congregationalists as the 
original church of their distinctive order. Browne 
entertained views upon the question of the separa- 
tion of Church and State which, whether derived 
from the Norwich Anabaptists or not, were decid- 
edly advanced, and these ere long he proceeded to 
set forth in a Treatise. He says : "The magistrates 
have no ecclesiastical authoritie at all, but onelie 
as anie other Christians, if so be they be Chris- 
tians." "They may doe nothing concerning the 
church, but onelie civilie." They are to "rule the 
Commoan Wealth in all outwarde lustice"; but " to 
force a submission to ecclesiastical government by 
Lawes & Penalties belongeth not to them." 

Following upon these utterances by Browne are 
others of an identical tenor in 161 1, attributed to 
John Smyth, the organizer of the first church of 
English Baptists. Then again in 1614 we find 
Leonard Busher, a citizen of London and a Bap- 
tist, issuing his Religious Peace ; or, Plea for Lib- 
erty of Conscience ; and in 16 15 John Murton 
appears (also a Baptist) with his proof, That no 
Man Oiight to be Persecuted for his Religion. 
Finally the significant fact comes to light, that in 
1626 there were eleven Baptist churches in Eng- 
land, in each of which there was taught the doctrine 
of religious liberty.^ 

It is — in a peculiar sense — as the child of this 

' Henry C. Vedder, A Short History of the Baptists, p. 139, 



14 Early Rhode Island 

culminating period in the growth of the spirit of 
Toleration in England that Roger Williams comes 
upon the scene. Born in London of English par- 
ents, about the year 1603/ he is first heard of taking 
sermons and speeches in shorthand^ in the Star 
Chamber. This manifestation of parts commended 
him to Sir Edward Coke, — "that man of honor, 
wisdom, and piety," as Williams affectionately calls 
him, — by whom he was placed in the then newly 
founded Charterhouse School. From this insti- 
tution, so closely identified in the minds of persons 
of the present day with the names of Addison, 
Grote, and Thackeray, he went to Pembroke Col- 
lege, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 
1626. Tradition has it that upon leaving college 
he studied law with his patron Coke, but, however 
that may have been, the genius of the times had 
entered into him, and he espoused theology. In 
1629, we find him installed as chaplain to Sir 
William Masham of Otes, High Laver, County of 
Essex, and not only so, but in love with the niece 
of Lady Barrington, the latter an aunt to Oliver 
Cromwell.^ On two occasions, a "living" was 

' The birth of Roger Williams has been fixed at various dates from 1599 
to 1607. The subject is discussed by Oscar S. Straus in his Roger IVilliams 
(1894), pp. 7-1 1, and by Almond D, Hodges, Jr., in the N. Eng. Hist, and 
Gen. Reg. (1899), vol. liii., p. 60. The date as fixed by Hodges is 1604. 
There exists, however, among the papers of the R. I. Hist. Soc, what pur- 
ports to be a copy of a letter by Roger Williams, bearing date 7 Feb., 
1677-78, which begins, " I, Roger Williams," etc., " aged about seventie- 
five years," etc. According to this document, Williams was born in 1603 or 
1604. 

' " I knowing what short-hand could doe as well as most in England from 
my childhood." Geo. Fox Digged (Narr. Club ed.), p. 131. 

*The truth that "all mankind love a lover" must justify a pause to note 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 1 5 

ofYered him in the Established Church, but he 
decHned it. At this period, moreover, he had 
become acquainted with Thomas Hooker and John 
Cotton, both destined to acquire fame across the 
sea, but neither of whom had as yet so far with- 
drawn from the AngHcan fold as to discard the 
prayer-book ; and to these friends Williams — 
already essaying the temper of his controversial 
sword — "presented his arguments from Scripture 
why he durst not join with them in their use of 
Common Prayer." 

Later in his career Williams is known to have 
had a mastery of the Dutch language, for he has him- 
self told us that he taught this tongue to Milton.^ 
With his marked tendency towards separatism it 
would have been but natural that while yet in 
England he should to some extent have affiliated 
with the Anglo-Dutch Anabaptists ; and if so, it was 
from them that in all probability he acquired his 
knowledge of Dutch, for certainly he had but little 
opportunity to acquire it in America. Then, too, 
as Mr. Douglas Campbell points out, some of 
Williams's ethico-political ideas, as expressed shortly 
after his arrival in Massachusetts, bore a color 
almost certainly imparted from Holland.^ But 
whatever the source, his views by the year 1630 
were so uncompromisingly separatist and in favor 

that Williams, while unsuccessful in his suit, evidently possessed the affec- 
tions of the lady, " We hope to live together in the heavens [he writes to 
Lady Barrington on May 2, 1629] though ye Lord have denied that union 
on earth." — N. Eng. Hist, and Gen. Reg. (1889), vol. xliii., pp. 316-320. 

' Narr. Club Pub.., vol. vi., p. 262. 

' The Puritan in Holland, England, and Atneriea (1893), vol. ii., p. 204. 



1 6 Early Rhode Island 

of Toleration that he found England narrow, and 
decided to remove to the colony of Massachusetts 
Bay in America, — a place, where naturally enough, 
he expected to find liberal ideas domiciled ; — among 
others, the idea which had brought the Mennonites 
to Norwich, and which in turn had sent the Pilgrims 
to Amsterdam and Leyden, — the idea of Freedom 
of Conscience, as implied in that of the separation 
of Church and Magistracy, and which had been in 
process of reciprocal exchange between England 
and Holland for a hundred years.^ Bristol was the 
port whence he was to sail, and setting out thither, he 
tells in what bitterness of spirit he " rode Windsor- 
way by Stoke House, where was that blessed man 
[his patron] whom he durst not acquaint with his 
conscience and his flight." 

On the 5th of February, 1631, Roger Williams, 
accompanied by his wife Mary,^ landed in Massa- 
chusetts from the good ship Lyojt, at the age of 
twenty-eight years. Here, then, at length, the 
principle of Toleration militant in a youthful and 
impetuous, yet true Sir Galahad, — a principle 
traceable through an ancestral line of Baptists, 
Brownites, Mennonites, Anabaptists, Bohemian 
Brethren, and mediaeval doctors of the type of 
Peter Chilcicky, — was brought face to face with 
the reactionary principle of Theocracy and perse- 

' Growth of the principle of Toleration discussed : Masson's Mil- 
ton, vol. iii., pp. 9S-129; Baxter's As to Roger Williams, pp. 86-S7, 
note ; Professor Diman's Orations and Essays, p. 127 ; Palfrey's New 
Eng., vol. i., p. 414, note; Cobb's Rise of Relig. Lib. in Am. (1902) 
passim. 

* Nee Barnard, R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. viii., p. 67. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 1 7 

cutlon in the persons of the magistrates and clergy 
of Massachusetts Bay. As has been said, WilHams 
was young and ardent, and this fact, during the 
few years of his residence at the Bay, was brought 
to Hght no less distinctly than that of his knightly 
devotion to a great principle. Indeed, I think it 
may truthfully be said of him at this time, that, — 
while he apprehended the principle of Toleration 
as clearly as he ever did, being careful, according 
even to Winthrop, to restrict its application to 
cases such as did not involve "the civill peace," — 
he had not as yet come under the conviction that 
it was to be in any special way his mission to pro- 
mote this principle. He stood before the Puritan 
Theocracy perplexed, indignant, weapon drawn, 
challenging it by every instinct of his nature and at 
every point. It was of the old and of the dark- 
ness ; he was of the new and of the light ; and 
there could be no parley between them. His at- 
tack, therefore, was made at once and all along 
the line ; and, like that of many another young 
soldier, comprehended somewhat too indiscrimi- 
nately both the salient and the negligible points of 
the enemy. 

Thus we find him, a few weeks after his arrival, 
not only contending that the civil magistrate ought 
not to inflict punishment for sins as such, — that 
is, for acts such as idolatry. Sabbath-breaking, 
blasphemy, etc., which are forbidden in the first 
table of the Decalogue, and which, though offences 
against God, are not at the same time in them- 
selves offences against man, — a position involv- 



1 8 Early Rhode Islaizd 

ing the whole idea of Freedom of Conscience ; 
but contending also, and with equal pertinacity, 
that the churches of Massachusetts ought publicly 
to abase themselves in sackcloth and ashes for 
having, while yet in England, partaken of the sacra- 
ment according to the English ritual. Then again 
we find him while in Plymouth — whither, in the 
summer of 1631, he had removed from Salem, his 
first residence — taking the broad ground, ethically 
sound (albeit a trifle Utopian), that the true and 
ultimate source of title to the lands of America was 
not the royal patent of some so-called Christian 
king, but the Indians; and, upon his return to 
Salem in August, 1633, insisting just as strenuously 
that certain regular meetings of the neighborhood 
clergy were highly objectionable as tending toward 
the establishment of a " presbytery or superintend 
dency to the prejudice of the churche's liberties." 

Moreover, although in November, 1634, Williams 
is aeain heard of as reiteratinp" his views concerningf 
royal patents, he had in the meantime found 
opportunity thoroughly to stigmatize the Church 
of England as anti-Christian, and to measure 
swords with Cotton on the interesting question 
whether or not it was Scriptural for women to appear 
veiled in church. But by April, 1635, our restless 
champion, who (however obnoxious to Cotton's 
charge of being at times " a haberdasher of small 
questions ")^ would, like the Galahad to whom he 

' " Never was a noble and sweet-spirited man bedeviled by a scrupulosity 
more trivial." " They [scruples] were to him perhaps what bric-a-brac is 
to a collector; what a well-arranged altar and candlesticks are to a ritual- 
ist." — Edw. Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation {1897), pp. 301-302. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 1 9 

has been compared, keep his soul undefiled, came 
forward with a plea for Freedom of Conscience, 
the validity of which is by no means universally 
conceded even to-day, and which in the seventeenth 
century was conceded by very few. This was, that 
an oath ought not to be administered to an unre- 
generate man, for the reason that the taking of an 
oath was an act of worship implying certain religious 
opinions on the part of the taker, and that if one 
not holding these opinions were, through fear 
or duress of any kind, to take the oath notwith- 
standing, he would virtually be coerced into " taking 
the name of God in vain."* How advanced this 
reasoning was may be realized from the fact that it 
is not every State of the American Union even 
now which permits a man to "swear" or " affirm" 
at his option'^; and from the further fact that no 
longer ago than 1880 Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, al- 
though a member by due election of the British 
House of Commons, was refused his seat, and 
forcibly dragged from the House by ten policemen, 
because (as the law then stood) he was not per- 
mitted to " affirm " allegiance, and would only 

' Williams makes clear his position on this question of oaths in his Hire- 
ling Ministry (1652), p. 34. He says: "Although it be lawfull (in case) for 
Christians to invocate the name of the Most High in swearing, yet, since 
it is a part of his holy worship, etc., persons may as well be forced unto any 
part of the worship of God as unto this." Statements by Winthrop and 
Edward Winslow bear out the above as a fair rendering of Williams's con- 
tention at the time the residents' and freemen's oaths were required, — Win- 
throp's Journal, i., 158, and Winslow's Hypocrisy Unmasked (1646), p. 66. 
Cotton's statement, on the contrary, leaves the position of Williams much 
less intelligible. — Narr. Club Pub., vol. ii., p. 13. 

'' The exceptions would seem to be Alabama, and, more doubtfully, 
North Carolina. 



20 Early Rhode Island 

"swear" it with the understanding that the words, 
" so help me God," with which the oath concluded, 
were unintelligible to him. 

Enough has been said to show that, as de- 
clared by John Quincy Adams long since, Roger 
Williams was " conscientiously contentious." The 
next question is. Was his banishment, which was 
decreed by the Massachusetts General Court, on 
October 9, 1635, so decreed because he was po- 
litically seditious, or because he entertained and 
" vented " religious opinions which were abhorrent 
to the Puritan Theocracy ? 

In attempting to answer this question, it should 
be borne in mind that, as already pointed out, the 
Puritan Theocracy, like all Theocracies, was itself 
but an organized body of opinions, and conse- 
quently was highly sensitive to all opinions which 
in any way either actually came in conflict with it, 
or seemed likely to do so. How sensitive the The- 
ocracy was in the face of hostile opinion — or of 
opinion that it thought hostile — is clearly seen in 
the condemnation with which the Council or Synod, 
held in Cambridge in 1637, apropos of the Anti- 
nomian controversy, visited fourscore and two 
"erroneous opinions"; and in the declaration of 
the Cambridge Platform of 1648, — the veritable 
written constitution of the Theocracy, — that the 
magistrate ought "to restrayn and punish idolatry, 
blasphemy, heresy, and the venting of opinions 
that destroy the foundations." 

Now in a community organized upon such a 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 2 1 

plan, it is evident that a conscientiously contentious 
man — a Roger Williams, in other words — must 
speedily get into difficulty. His mere opinions 
would bring him trouble, regardless of any civil 
disturbance which they might provoke. Thus, the 
opinion held by Williams that the civil magistrate 
ought not to inflict punishment for sins as such, — 
that is, for breaches of the first table of the Deca- 
logue ; the opinion that the churches of the Bay 
settlement ought publicly to make repentance for 
not having formally renounced all fellowship with 
the English churches ; the opinion that the Eng- 
lish churches were anti-Christian ; the opinion that 
to force an oath upon an unregenerate man was 
wrong, — any or all of these, wholly apart from 
any civil bearing which they may have had, were 
amply sufficient to elicit from the Massachusetts 
of 1635 a decree of banishment, if not something 
worse. Nor is this surprising. Did not Gover- 
nor Endicott, as early as 1629, banish John and 
Samuel Browne because they denounced the Puri- 
tan clergy as separatists, and claimed for them- 
selves the privilege of continuing the use of the 
prayer-book?^ And did not Governor Winthrop, 
no later than 1637, declare to Anne Hutchinson : 
" Your course is not to be suffered ; . . . we see 
not that any should have authority to set up any 
other exercises besides what authority hath already 
set up " ^ ? 

' Palfrey's New Eng., vol. i., pp. 298-299. " The cause of their expul- 
sion was religious dissent," — Ibid., p. 413. 

* Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., vol. ii., appendix ii. 



22 Early Rhode Island 

But to say that the religious opinions of Roger 
WilHams, as such, are sufficient to account for his 
banishment, is not to say all. These opinions, 
while sufficient to account for his banishment, and 
while primarily they do account for it, do not, I 
think, account for it altogether. To do this, it is 
necessary to take into consideration three things 
additional : first, that aside from purely religious 
opinions, Williams entertained opinions — to him 
purely religious, but best characterized perhaps as 
ethico-political — which were obnoxious to the 
Massachusetts Commonwealth ; second, that he 
was so much of a chevalier in morals, was " so 
enamored of perfection," as to be reckless of the 
immediate consequences of his opinions ; and, 
third, that the period of his residence in Massa- 
chusetts was one charged with peculiar peril to 
the State, — a period in which opinions of a 
political nature, particularly when so persistently 
urged as were those of Williams, were more 
than ordinarily likely to involve immediate con- 
sequences. 

For example, when, in November, 1634, Williams 
renewed his attack upon the royal patent, assert- 
ing that it was " a national sin to hold " it, and " a 
national duty to renounce " it, and calling attention 
to a letter to the Kine which he had himself drawn 
up, humbly acknowledging the evil of " that part 
of the patent which respected the donation of 
land," the Bay magistrates were in deep perplexity 
over the news, lately received from England, that 
an order had been issued by the Lords of Council 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 23 

for the production of the patent at their board, 
and that it was in the King's mind to send out a 
General Governor for the colonies. And again, 
for example, when, in April, 1635, Williams was 
declaimingf against the administration of oaths to 
the unregenerate, the magistrates were endeavor- 
ing by the instrumentality of a special oath to 
test the fidelity of the freemen and residents to 
the local government, with a view to resisting the 
intrusion of a General Governor, should one be 
sent. Finally, — and this seems to have been the 
straw to break the camel's back, — when, in July, 
1635, the government of the Bay refused to honor 
an application of the town of Salem for a grant of 
land because Salem countenanced Williams, the 
latter directly affronted the government by caus- 
ing his church to write to the other churches of 
Massachusetts proposing to admonish the magis- 
trates and deputies for "a heinous sin" ; a propo- 
sition, by the way, which, failing of acceptance, led 
its author, after a vain attempt to induce his own 
church to separate from the others, to separ- 
ate on his individual account from all the Bay 
communions. 

From a political point of view, therefore, — which 
was of necessity to a considerable extent the point 
of view of Massachusetts at the time, — Roger 
Williams was undeniably factious. He was doing 
all that lay in his power to thwart the government 
at a critical moment, and in a variety of important 
measures. His attitude may best be realized now- 
adays, perhaps, by comparing it with that of 



24 Early Rhode Island 

William Lloyd Garrison two centuries later.^ Gar- 
rison, in 1835, stood toward the government of 
the United States very much as did Williams in 
1635 toward the government of Massachusetts 
Bay. Garrison, like Williams, was a man ruled by 
his conscience, and reckless of consequences in 
following it. He also, like Williams, was "in ear- 
nest, would not equivocate, would not excuse, 
would not retreat a single inch, and would be 
heard." Like Williams, too, he assailed with all 
his might the fundamental charter of government 
under which he lived, pronouncing it with true 
Roofer Williams vehemence "a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell." The Boston 
of 1635 banished Williams, while the Boston of a 
later age had to content itself with dragging Gar- 
rison through its streets with a rope round his 
body. Neither Williams nor Garrison, judged by 
the higher standards of his own age, merited the 
treatment which he received ; but that each re- 
ceived the treatment which he did, cannot, in the 
light of average human nature, be considered sur- 
prising.^ 

Roger Williams, then, offended against the Puri- 
tan Theocracy both by his religious opinions and by 
certain of his opinions which were ethico-political ; 
his offence upon the score of religion being primary 

' The same parallel has, I find, suggested itself to Mr. C. F. Adams, 
Mass.: Its Historians, p. 26. 

' The outburst of official and newspaper wrath against Mr. Edward 
Atkinson, in 1899, for mailing "seditious" anti-imperialistic literature to 
American soldiers in the Philippines may serve to reveal to us the present- 
day consequences of Roger Williams-like conduct. 



The Puritan Theocracy ajid Roger Williams 25 

and fundamental, and that upon the score of poU- 
tics incidental and contributory.^ 

For an understanding, however, of just what was 
siofnified in the foundinof of Rhode Island, it should 
be borne in mind that while Roger Williams, as 
the representative in America of the time-spirit of 
Toleration, in its attitude of challenge toward the 
reactionary spirit of persecution in the Puritan The- 
ocracy, was banished primarily for his religious 
opinions, it cannot be said that he was banished 
primarily for holding the particular opinion that 
the civil magistrate should not inflict punishment 
for breaches of the first table of the Decalogue, 
that is, for matters of conscience. This appears 
from two considerations : the first, that Williams 
himself nowhere mentions his views with regard to 
Freedom of Conscience as a leading cause of his 

' Beginning with John Cotton {Narr. Club Pub., vol. ii., pp. 44-50) and 
Edward Winslow {Hypoc. Unmasked, pp. 65-66), and continuing with Dr. 
Palfrey {Hist, of New Eng., vol. i., p. 414), Dr. Dexter {As to Roger Wil- 
liams, p. 79), and H. Cabot Lodge {Hist. Eng. Cols, in Am., p. 34S), 
it has been the practice of Massachusetts writers to ascribe the banishment 
of Roger Williams exclusively to his political attitude. But as long ago 
as 1644 the subterfuge involved in this was seen and exposed by that 
curious collector of gossip and enemy to Toleration, the Rev. Thomas Ed- 
wards. He said : " [In New England] they found out a pretty fine dis- 
tinction to deceive themselves with, and to solve the contrariety of their 
practice to some other principles," namely, " that the magistrate questioned 
and punished for . . . opinions and errors . . . not as heresies and 
such opinions, but as breaches of the civill peace and disturbances to the 
Commonwealth, — which distinction [would have enabled Parliament to 
deal with English dissenters], as the Magistrates in New England did 
with Mr. Williams and the Antinomians, . . . and yet have said, they 
punished not for conscience, nor because of such opinions, but because 
[such] opinions, ways, and practices were an occasion of much hurt to the 
Commonwealth, a breach of civill peace, etc." {Antapologia, p. 165.) 



26 Early Rhode Island 

banishment,^ but does so mention his views upon 
separation and his course in separating personally 
from all the Massachusetts churches '' ; and the 
second, that down to October 20, 1762,^ no one 
seems to have looked upon Freedom of Conscience 
as aught but one of several things involving the 
banishment of Williams/ As Mr. William E. 

' In his reply to Cotton (" Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered," 
London, 1644, Narr. Club Pub., vol. i., pp. 40-41), Williams mentions 
Soul Liberty, though not in terms, as among the causes. He also, in Au- 
gust, 1651, in a letter to John Endicott, alludes to the "point of the Civil 
Magistrate's dealing in matters of Conscience" as " a cause of my banish- 
ment" {Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 217). But in neither place does he 
single out Freedom of Conscience as the cause, or even a leading cause. 

'It is his principles of separation to which, in the reply to Cotton, Wil- 
liams ascribes his banishment. " My ' persecution,' " he says {Narr. Club 
Pub., vol. i., pp. 370-371), " was due to my admonishing of them of such 
unclean walking between a particular church, which they only profess to be 
Christ's, and a nationall, which Mr. Cotton professeth to separate from." 
Cotton himself, moreover, states that Williams ascribed his banishment to 
his views upon separation. Finally, in the letter to which Williams made 
reply — a letter privately written by Cotton in 1636, before he had had any 
controversy with Williams, and hence entitled to special consideration — the 
writer assumes that separation may well have been the cause of the banish- 
ment. Consult also Winthrop {Journal i., 175-176), Diman {Narr. Club 
Pub., vol. ii., p. 179), and Dexter {As to Roger Williams, pp. 65-79). -^^ 
the same time, it should not be hastily concluded that Williams's views 
upon Soul Liberty were a matter of indifference to his Boston critics. It 
was "recounted by the Boston church as one of five specific errors" of the 
Salemites under Williams that they held it not to be lawful " for magistrates 
to punish the breaches of the First Table, unless thereby the Civill Peace of 
the Commonwealth be disturbed " (Morton's Memorial, p. 82). Consult 
Winthrop {yournal i., 162). Perhaps the best presentation of the claim 
that Soul Liberty was more than an incidental cause of the banishment is 
that made by Judge Thomas Durfee in his Anniversary Oration on the 
Founding of Providence^ pp. 48-57. 

^ It was at this date that Stephen Hopkins began to contribute to the 
Providence Gazette his account of the planting and growth of Providence, 
an account in which Soul Liberty is represented as the cause of Williams's 
banishment (W. E. Foster, R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. vii., pp. 98-99). 

*John Callender, who wrote in 1738, and was Rhode Island's earliest 
historian, takes the position indicated in the text. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 2 7 

Foster, librarian of the Providence Public Librar}'-, 
justly remarks, ** The stress which has been laid on 
the element of religious liberty as a pre-eminent 
factor in the occurrence, has perhaps resulted from 
regarding it too largely in the light of Roger Wil- 
liams's subsequent career."^ 

The decree by the General Court, as has been 
said, was issued on October 9, 1635.^ It was a 
step by no means hastily or inconsiderately taken. 
Williams, to quote the apt words of Edward Wins- 
low, was a man "lovely in his carriage." More- 
over, he sustained toward Governor Winthrop a 
relation resembling that which in former days he 
had sustained toward Sir Edward Coke, and was 
regarded by Cotton himself with affection and es- 
teem. To banish such a man was not easy or 
agreeable even for the stern priests of reaction 
who constituted the government of the Bay. They 
went about their task slowly, and with pauses of 
what in other men might be called relenting ; but 
Williams was as uncompromising on his side as 
they were on theirs, and the inevitable came in due 
course. Six weeks was the time allotted within 
which the former was to remove beyond the limits 
of Massachusetts, but owing to an illness which he 
had incurred, and to the near approach of winter, 
permission was granted him to remain in Salem 
until spring. It would be interesting to know what 

• W. E. Foster, " Early Attempts at R. I. Hist.," R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. 
vii.. pp. 99-103, 

■■* Date is fully discussed by Professsor Diman in Narr. Club Pub., vol. 
ii., pp. 238-240, and by Dr. Dexter in As to Roger Williams, p. 58, note. 



28 Early Rhode Island 

passed between him and his Salem adherents dur- 
ing the few months longer that he continued with 
them. There no doubt was much earnest consul- 
tation, much searching of the Scriptures : — 

"Beside the goodman lay his Bible's fair 

Broad open page upon the accustomed stand, 

And many a message had he noted there 

Of Israel wandering the wild wastes of sand; 

And each assurance had he marked with care, 
Made by Jehovah, of the promised land." 

Winthrop says that he drew "about twenty per- 
sons to his opinion, and that they were intended to 
erect a plantation about the Narragansett Bay." 
Winthrop himself had privately advised his friend 
"to steer his course to the Narragansett Bay and 
Indians," and it is but natural to suppose that 
some plan for establishing a settlement in that 
region — a region familiar to Williams by reason 
of two earlier visits to the Narragansetts — was 
broached among those in his confidence. The 
leader himself evidently gave the plan little en- 
couragement, for he explicitly asserted afterwards 
that his object in taking refuge among the Indians 
was to study their language in order to be able " to 
do them good," and that he had " desired to be 
without English company."^ Matters were unex- 
pectedly brought to a crisis by news conveyed to 
Williams that the General Court had again met, 
upon information that he was carrying on the work 
of exhorting and proselyting in his own house, and 
had resolved to send him to England. This news was 

' S. S. Rider's Historical Tract No. 14, p. 53. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams 29 

followed by a citation, issued January 11, 1636, for 
him to appear forthwith before the court in Boston. 
Perceiving the gravity of the situation, Williams 
disregarded the last order, and, having made what 
preparation he could, quietly left Salem, in 
company probably with his serving-man, Thomas 
Angell,^ and in the midst of bitter cold and snow 
set his face resolutely toward the land of the Nar- 
ragansetts. In so doing he avoided by three days 
a meeting with Captain John Underbill, whom the 
court had sent down from Boston, in a small sloop, 
to secure him as a prisoner. What route Williams 
took from Salem is not definitely known.^ He had 
in former years, through gifts and visits, ingratiated 
himself both with Canonicus, Chief Sachem of the 
Narragansetts, and with Massasoit, Chief Sachem 
of the Wampanoags or Pokanokets. His acquaint- 
ance with Massasoit was peculiarly close, for he 
had been "great friends" with him at Plymouth; 
and it seems fair to presume that upon quitting 
Salem he betook himself as directly as possible to 
the home of the latter at Sowams, now Warren, 
R. I. This point could be reached in about four 
days, and was in the immediate neighborhood of 
the Narragansetts. An asylum among the Indians, 

'On January 19, 1609-10, Katherine Angell, of St. Thomas Apostle, 
London, spinster, and daughter of William Angell, citizen and fishmonger 
of London, was united in marriage to John Pemberton, citizen of London 
and grocer. John Pemberton in turn was cousin to Roger Williams. More- 
over, William Angell had, through his son James, a grandson Thomas. 
N. Eng. Hist, and Gen. Reg. (1889), vol. xliii., p. 299. 

''■ That the journey was by land would seem clear (Diman, Narr. Club 
Pub., vol. ii., p. 87; Dexter, As to Roger Williams, p. 62, note); but 
contra see " Guild," Narr. Club Pub., vol. i., p. 32. 



30 Early Rhode Island 

however, meant little in the way of comfort, as 
may be inferred not only from Williams's own 
allusion to the wigwam as a " filthy, smoky hole," 
but from Edward Winslow's remark, upon the 
occasion of a visit made by himself to Sowams 
soon after the landing of the Pilgrims, that he went 
supperless to bed, and was " worse weary of his 
lodging than of his journey." But whatever the 
route taken and experiences met with by Williams, 
he " was sorely tossed [as in a boat] for one four- 
teen weeks," knowing " neither bread nor bed " ; 
and so outraged in soul at the cruelties visited 
upon him for opinion's sake, that he felt it to " lie 
upon Massachusetts ... to examine with fear 
and trembling, before the eyes of flaming fire, the 
true cause of all his sorrows and sufferings."^ 

The exile first established himself at Seekonk, 
now Rehoboth, Massachusetts, on land purchased 
from Massasoit. The land lay on the east bank 
of the Seekonk (Blackstone) River, — a stream then 
forming the western boundary of Plymouth Colony. 
Williams, therefore, was within the jurisdiction of 
Plymouth, and soon received from Edward Winslow 
(at that time governor of the latter colony) a 
letter stating that he " was fallen into the edge of 
their bounds," that " they were loth to displease the 
Bay," and advising him to remove "but to the 

'Letter to Major Mason, Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 333. Cotton 
asserts that, pending the time fixed by the court for the departure of Wil- 
liams from Massachusetts, " some of his friends went to the place appointed 
by himself beforehand to make provision of housing and other necessaries for 
him against his coming" {Narr. Club Pub., vol. ii., p. 18). But Williams 
would not have spoken of himself as " tossed for one fourteen v^^eeks" had 
he been able to go to a place selected and prepared for him in advance. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger WilUa^ns 3 i 

other side of the water," in which location he and 
they " should be loving neighbors together," This 
letter must have been received late in the spring or 
early in the summer of 1636, for Williams could 
hardly have arrived at Seekonk before May, and 
when the letter reached him he had already begun 
"to build and to plant." While still at Seekonk 
he was joined by at least three persons, William 
Harris, John Smith, and Francis Wickes. This 
increased the number of his company to four be- 
sides himself ; and, according to the received tradi- 
tion as to what took place, Williams, upon hearing 
from Winslow, — perhaps in the month of June,^ — 
set out with these four, in a canoe, to seek a suit- 
able abiding-place to the west of the Seekonk River. 
Providence (the Indian Mooshassuc) is situated 
at the head of Narragansett Bay, on a peninsula 
formed by the Seekonk and Mooshassuc Rivers, 
which rising, — the one in Massachusetts and the 
other in Rhode Island, — flow southward and empty 
into the bay at a distance from each other of about 
one mile. The canoe in which Williams and his com- 
pany were embarked proceeded (according to 
the tradition) down the Seekonk, and, on coming 

' There is in existence a memorandum by Benedict Arnold which reads : 
"We came to Providence to Dwell, the 20th of April, 1636." According 
to this, Providence was founded some two months earlier than the state- 
ment of Roger Williams in his letter to Major Mason (Narr. Club Pub., 
vol. vi., p. 333) would warrant us in concluding. But an examination of 
the memorandum reveals the fact that it was made some fifteen or more 
years after 1636, — a circumstance fatal to its acceptance as authority of a 
higher order than the statement of Williams. The Narr. Hist. Reg. (vol. 
v., pp. 27-42), contains a collection of interesting papers from Public Library 
Notes and Book Notes on the Arnold memorandum. 



T^2 Early Rhode Island 

opposite a cove in the peninsula above mentioned, 
was saluted by a group of Indians assembled near 
Slate Rock^ with the friendly words: " Wha — 
cheer, Netop ! Wha — cheer!" WiUiams there- 
upon made signs to the Indians that he would meet 
them on the eastern bank of the Mooshassuc, which 
he did by taking the canoe round Fox Point, and 
paddling up the stream in question to a point 
marked by a spring,^ where he disembarked with 
his company. But, according to a version of the 
tradition which, between 1776 and 1785, was im- 
parted by Stephen Hopkins to Theodore Foster 
(the latter of whom recorded it in the form of a 
"deposition," on June 6, 1821), it was not on the 
occasion of the removal of himself and company 
from Seekonk to Mooshassuc that Williams was 
greeted by the Indians as above described, but on 
an earlier occasion, that of a reconnoitring trip 
taken by himself with his man Angell, preparatory 
to the removal, and for the purpose of fixing upon 
a location, — a version entitled to serious considera- 
tion both from its early date and from the trust- 
worthy character of the man who gave it currency. 
It is a circumstance worthy of note that when 

' Slate Rock now lies buried beneath the sand and debris used in con- 
structing Roger Williams Square in Providence, — a square some 200 feet 
each way, bounded by Power, Williams, Roger, and Gano streets. The 
appearance of the rock and its surroundings, in their original condition, is 
indicated in a painting by Mr. George W. Whitaker, owned by the R. I. 
Hist. Soc. 

* What probably is Roger Williams's Spring, otherwise known as Scott's 
Spring " is situated within the square bounded by North Main street, 
Church street, Canal street, and Allen's lane. It is now walled up and 
covered with an iron cap in the basement of the brick house. No. 242, 
North Main street." — R. I. Hist. Hoc. Pub., n. s., vol. vii., p. 135. 



The Puritan Theocracy and Roger Williams '^i 

Williams stepped from his canoe at the spring, the 
only European living- within the limits of what 
is now the commonwealth of Rhode Island was 
William Blackstone, an English clergyman and re- 
cluse, who, having passed several years on the 
shores of Massachusetts Bay, had left there on the 
coming of the Puritans, and removed to what is 
now the town of Cumberland. He was a man of 
intellectual tastes, and built his home — a veritable 
lodge in the wilderness — on a spot near the banks 
of the Pawtucket River, which he beautified with an 
orchard, and which was called by him Study Hill. ' 
His object in leaving Massachusetts was, it is said, to 
escape the tyranny of the Lord Brethren, as in leav- 
ing England it had been to escape the tyranny of the 
Lord Bishops. The object of Williams was much 
the same : and here at Mooshassuc he, like his eccen- 
tric neighbor, found a refuge which was to be per- 
manent. But this refuge, in the case of the former, 
was destined to be more than the cell of a learned 
solitary. Starting with the one purpose of bringing 
the glad tidings to the heathen, Roger Williams was 
led almost immediately to enlarge this into the pur- 
pose — suggested no doubt by his doctrine of Soul 
Liberty, heretofore somewhat theoretically held — 
of founding " a shelter for a few of his distressed 
countrymen " ; and, ere a decade had passed, into 
the purpose — than which few nobler have sprung 
from the human heart — of holding forth " a livelie 
experiment, that a most flourishing civill State may 
stand, and best bee maintained, . . . with full 
liberty in religious concernments." 



CHAPTER II 

THE EXPULSION OF THE ANTINOMIANS 

AS has just been seen, the occupation by Roger 
WilHams and his Httle company of the spot 
which was to become Providence Plantations 
was the direct result of the inability of Puritan 
Massachusetts, — an inability inherent in its very 
theocratic organization, — to brook the assertion 
within its jurisdiction of opinions contrary to its own. 
But the future commonwealth of Rhode Island 
germinated at two points : the second was the 
island of Aquidneck,^ or Rhode Island, in Nar- 
ragansett Bay, — the very spot, for aught that is 
known, where, in the year looo of our era, Tyrker, 
the foster-father of Leif the Norseman, became 
crazed at sight of the wondrous grapes of Vinland ; 
and it will now be necessary to relate the events 
which led to the settlement of this spot, — events of 
the same general character as those which led to 
the banishment of Williams, but more replete in 
their unfolding with the element of the dramatic. 

' The name Aquidneck (Aquidnick, Aquednet) signifies /<?, on, or at, the 
island. Thus, in Acts xxvii., i6, Eliot wrote, "Ahquednet hettamun 
Claudia," — "an island called Claudia." The diminutive, Aquidnesick or 
Aquedeneset, signifies "the little island in the mouth of the bay." — Note 
by Trumbull to Lechford's Plaine Dealing, p. 93. 

34 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 35 

Indeed, the mere list of the dramatis personce for 
this second act in the history of both Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island, — an act embracing the whole 
of the year 1637, — excites our interest even before 
the curtain rises upon the performers in their re- 
spective roles. First, there is Mistress Anne 
Hutchinson, who, in company with her husband, 
William Hutchinson, came to Massachusetts in 
1634. She was born about the year 1600, and after 
her marriage lived at Alford, Lincolnshire, Eng- 
land, near Boston, where her husband owned an 
estate. While at Alford she was used to attend upon 
the ministrations of the Rev. John Cotton, then 
rector of St. Botolph's, Boston, and conceived so 
high an opinion of this clergyman's gifts of grace 
and powers of discourse that, upon his leaving for 
America, she and her husband resolved to follow 
him. She is said, upon trustworthy authority, to 
have been a cousin of John Dryden.-* Be that as 
it may, she was a woman of unusual force of miind ; 
and though slight of frame and not comely, was 
possessed of a magnetism of personality that was by 
no means inconsiderable. Winthrop, in words often 
quoted, has described her as " of a haughty and 
fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, 
and a very voluble tongue," — in short, as an Ameri- 
can Jezebel ; and (^per contra^ her husband as " a 

' The mother of Anne Hutchinson was a sister of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 
Bart., who was the grandfather of John Drj'den. This would make Anne 
a second cousin of the poet. Her father, it may be of interest to note, was 
the Rev. Francis Marbury, a distinguished clergyman of the Established 
Church, at first rector in Lincolnshire, but later of the London parishes, 
St. Martin's Vintry, St. Pancras's, and St. Margaret's, New Fish Street. — 
iV, Eng. Hist, and Gen. Reg., vol. xx., pp. 355-367. 



36 Early Rhode Island 

man of mild temper, weak parts, and wholly guided 
by his wife." The Rev. Thomas Welde, a typical 
Puritan ecclesiastic, alludes to Mistress Hutchin- 
son, in his Preface to the Short Story of the Anti- 
nomians, as " insolent and high-flowne in spirit and 
speech " ; while the historian Hubbard dubs her 
"a she-Gamaliel," and Cotton Mather (anagramma- 
tically), " a Non[e]-Such." We know, however, and 
that upon the testimony of both Winthrop and Cot- 
ton, that she was kind of heart, blameless in life, 
and more than ordinarily ready and skillful in wait- 
ing upon the afflicted of her own sex, — in a word, 
that she was a gentlewoman. 

But, according to John Winthrop, she brought 
with her from England " two dangerous errors : 
first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in 
a justified person ; second, that no sanctification 
can help to evidence to us our justification." ^ The 
first of these so-called " errors " is expressed by 
Winthrop in terms sufficiently comprehensible to 
the modern mind ; in fact, it is what is taught in 
most or all modern evang-elical relig^ious societies. 
The second "error," however, is not so easily un- 
derstood from Winthrop's statement. In substance, 
it is that human sanctification, which is the fruit of 
a scrupulous regard for, and observance of, fasts, 
vigils, new moons, and Sabbaths, that is to say, 
which is the fruit of human "works," is not (since 
Adam broke his covenant with his Maker, which 
was a covenant essentially of works) the thing 
which God requires of man in order to insure his 

' journal, i,, 200. 



The Expulsion of the Aniznommns 37 

salvation. What God now requires is justification, 
and justification differs from sanctification in that 
it is not of "works," but of " grace " through faith. 
Does not the Apostle Paul say, " By the works of 
the law shall no flesh be justified"? But "grace" 
consists in the indwelling in a human being of the 
Holy Ghost : consequently, according to Mistress 
Hutchinson, those who were not conscious of the 
presence of the Holy Ghost within themselves ; 
those who, — like all of the Puritan clergy of Massa- 
chusetts, John Cotton only excepted, — depended 
for salvation upon their "works," their rigorous ob- 
servance of the behests of the Mosaic Code, their 
anise, and their cummin, were doomed. In the 
terse words of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, " Hell 
yawned for such."^ 

That a woman harboring ideas of this sort, — 
particularly when "of a nimble wit" and "very 
voluble tongue," — should stir the Puritan Theoc- 
racy to its foundations was but natural ; and that 
she verily did make a stir we soon shall have occa- 
sion to see. 

Next in prominence to Mistress Hutchinson 
among our personce is John Wheelwright, the 
"silenced" vicar of Bilsby. He was a native of 
one of the hamlets of Alford in the Lincolnshire 
fens, took his degree at Cambridge in 16 18, is 
known to have been highly esteemed by Oliver 
Cromwell, and, having married as his second wife 

' Dr. George E. Ellis's Puritan Age, pp. 300-304, and Mr. C. F. 
Adams's Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, pp. 402-406, contain a 
full discussion of the theology of the Antinomians. 



38 Early Rhode Island 

the sister of Anne Hutchinson, set sail for America, 
landing at Boston in June, 1636, at the age of forty- 
four years. Wheelwright, like Roger Williams, 
had a " rockie " steadfastness in his convictions, 
but he had none of Williams's sweetness of spirit 
or graciousness of demeanor. He was downright 
in every respect. Not long after his arrival, the 
suggestion was made by some one, — not improb- 
ably by Mistress Hutchinson, his sister-in-law, — 
that he be placed at Cotton's side as assistant 
teacher in the Boston Church. This was distaste- 
ful to John Wilson, the pastor of the church, and 
was opposed by Winthrop. In the end, Wheel- 
wright, upon petition of the residents of Mount Wol- 
laston (now the town of Quincy), was made pastor 
of a church for that neigfhborhood. But even this 
was not accomplished without protest, for the new- 
comer was suspected of being tinctured with the 
opinions of Anne Hutchinson. 

Thus far in our list the personcE have been of the 
English middle class, sturdy and independent, but 
necessarily somewhat sombre of aspect. Against 
these there is now to be set, in relief, a dash of color, 
a cavalier figure, — young Sir Henry Vane. Vane 
was the son of a Privy Councillor, handsome in 
person, of excellent parts, and winning in his ad- 
dress. He came to Massachusetts contrary to the 
wish of his father, but under a three-years' leave of 
absence obtained directly from the King. When 
he landed at Boston in October, 1635, he was not 
far from the age of Roger Williams at the time of 
his landing ; that is to say, he was twenty-four years 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 39 

old ; and, what is more, the two men, both in out- 
ward bearing and inner graces, were akin. The 
Zeitgeist, or time-spirit, had entered into them aHke, 
consecrating them — each in his own sphere — to 
high and important service. Vane's arrival fol- 
lowed close upon the promulgation of Williams's 
banishment, and preceded the flight of the latter 
into the wilderness by scarcely three months ; yet 
in this interval the two became fast friends, — an 
occurrence fraught with deep consequences for 
Rhode Island, and through Rhode Island for hu- 
man freedom. But we are anticipating. As yet, 
Vane was but the popular young patrician, — the 
idol of Boston. 

Mistress Hutchinson, John Wheelwright, and 
young Sir Henry Vane are the leading figures in 
the little drama soon to open before us, but there 
are other and accessory figures hardly less interest- 
ing. There are, to begin with, the pastor and the 
teacher of the Boston Church, — carnal John Wil- 
son,^ and intellectual (albeit somewhat casuistical *^) 
John Cotton ; the latter a sort of New England 
Melancthon, prone in troublous times to be a trim- 
mer, and preaching (according to an old account) 
" that publicly one year that the next year he pub- 
licly repents of." Then there is narrowly ecclesi- 
astical Thomas Welde, pastor at Roxbury, and 
coarse-fibred, loud-voiced Hugh Peters, — Roger 
Williams's contratype successor at Salem, — who 

• Wilson in later years openly mocked at the Quaker victims of the Theoc- 
racy on their way to the scaffold. — Bishop's New England Judged, p. 124. 

' "Being a most excellent casuist." — Mather's Magnalia, bk. iii., ch. i., 
par. 28. 



40 " Early Rhode Island 

later, according to John Eliot, " beat the pulpit 
drum for Cromwell." There are also fierce, bigoted, 
yet somehow always picturesque, John Endicott, 
Thomas Dudley, rigorous and suspicious, in whose 
pocket after death was discovered the familiar bit 
of doeeerel aimed at such as " do a toleration 
hatch,"' and, — not a little out of place as head of 
an inquisitorial commission, — high-minded John 
Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts. Even these 
are not all, for as yet no notice has been taken of 
William Coddington and John Clarke, who, with 
John Coggeshall and William Aspinwall, were the 
principal founders of the settlement on Aquidneck. 
Coddington was born in the English Boston in 
1 60 1, and was evidently, while still in his native 
land, a man of substance and position ; for he was 
made by the Crown one of the original Assistants, 
or magistrates, under the charter creating the 
corporation of Massachusetts Bay. He came over 
in 1630, built (it is said) the first brick dwelling- 
house in Boston, was afterwards elected treasurer 
of the corporation, and in 1634 became owner, 
along with Edmund Quincy, of the bay front at 
Mount WoUaston. The Mount is the spot where 

' " Farewell, dear wife, children and friends, 
Hate heresie — make blessed ends. 



Let men of God, in courts and churches, watch 
O'er such as do a toleration hatch, 
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice 
To poison all with heresie and vice. 
If men be left, and otherwise combine, 
My epitaph 's, I dy'd no Libertine." 

lilagnalia, bk. ii., ch. v., par. I. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 41 

Wheelwright officiated as pastor in 1637, but it has 
ever been more celebrated as the Merry Mount of 
Thomas Morton (sometime " pettiefogger of Furne- 
vell's Inne "), who was wont to hold there, with 
certain boon companions, bacchanalian revels round 
a May-pole, till such time as, the Puritans arriving, 
Morton was made prisoner, and his Comus crew 
dispersed. As regards John Clarke, physician, 
born October 8, 1609, in Bedfordshire, England, 
— man of education and marked ability, the 
Franklin of Rhode Island in the delicate inter- 
colonial diplomacy of later years, — he comes into 
our dramatic list as a keen critic of the perform- 
ance rather than in any other way ; for, landing in 
Boston in the crisis of the scenes about to be 
described, he in deep disgust at once arranged to 
seek a home elsewhere. And as regards Cogge- 
shall and Aspinwall, they concern us now merely 
as deputies from Boston to the Massachusetts 
General Court. 

The initial scene of our drama shows Mistress 
Hutchinson in her own house in Boston, — a plain 
enough structure of hewn wood, standing on what 
is now the site of the " old corner bookstore " at the 
junction of Washington and School Streets. She 
is seated in her " parlor-kitchen " (the one room 
below stairs), amid a company of the goodwives of 
the neighborhood, and is expounding to them a 
late sermon by John Cotton. This is not one of 
the first meetings of the kind over which Anne 
Hutchinson has presided, for she exhibits no signs 



42 Early Rhode Island 

of timidity. She feels confidence in herself, and 
elucidates the Rev. Cotton with earnestness and 
power. As she goes on, her manner becomes 
more and more animated, her countenance glows 
with religious fervor, and she falls naturally into 
gesture. She feels herself to be instinct with the 
presence and the power of the Holy Ghost ; and 
while in this state of exaltation does not hesitate, 
— at the same time that she commends Master 
Cotton as having the " seale of the spirit," — to 
stigmatize the whole body of the Puritan clergy 
besides (an implied exception, of course, being 
made in the case of Wheelwright), as a " company 
of legall professors " who " lie poring on the law 
which Christ hath abolished." ^ 

An assemblage of women for any purpose other 
than perhaps a " spinning " was sufficiently rare in 
the Boston of 1636 ; and an assemblage for pur- 
poses directly exegetical of sermons and of the 
Scriptures was an event of the first magnitude. 
It was woman both in the pulpit and in politics, 
and as such had about it just that savor of naughti- 
ness which delights the sex. To attend Mistress 
Hutchinson's conversazioni (" gossipings," old Cot- 
ton Mather most ungallantly calls them) became, 
therefore, speedily the fashion for all female Bos- 
ton. Nor was the attendance wholly for entertain- 
ment. The Puritan, both male and female, was 
intensely concerned for his soul's salvation ; and if 
what was enjoined upon him every Lord's Day at 

' Johnson's Wonder- Working Providence (Poole's ed.), p. I02, quoted by 
Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts, p. 49. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 43 

meeting, and every Thursday at lecture, by the 
Rev. John Wilson was naught but idle observance 
under a worn-out covenant, he wanted to know 
the fact in time to make what new dispositions 
might be necessary in order to lay hold upon im- 
mortality. The Hutchinson school of exegesis, — 
or rather, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams happily 
terms it, the Hutchinson viva voce weekly religious 
review, — thus became, as may readily be seen, of 
serious consequence for the Rev. Wilson, and in- 
deed for the entire body of conservatives or be- 
lievers in a covenant of works. In brief, the very 
substructure of the Theocracy was being disintegra- 
ted by it, and there was need that something be done. 
What was done was, first, to fasten upon the 
Hutchinson party the name Antinomian, — a name 
coined by Martin Luther against John Agricola and 
his disciples, and signifying " above and adverse 
to the law or Mosaic Code " ; and, second, to rally 
the clergy outside Boston, whither the influence 
of Anne Hutchinson had not penetrated, to the 
support of the embarrassed Wilson. Meanwhile, 
Vane, the young Boston favorite, who had been 
bowed deferentially into the governorship within a 
year after landing, threw in his lot with the Hutch- 
inson party ; while the cautious Winthrop took his 
natural place at the head of the conservatives or 
legalists. As for evasive John Cotton, he hesi- 
tated in perplexity between the rival factions, an 
Antinomian at heart, but not convinced that that way 
flowed "the stream of outward credit and profit." ^ 

' For a full discussion of Cotton's Antinomian attitude, consult Professor 



44 Early Rhode Island 

The second scene in our drama is enacted in the 
Boston Meeting-house. The occasion is the solemn 
fast of January 29, 1637. Massachusetts, by or- 
der of the government, has entered upon this fast 
because of the " miserable estate of the churches in 
Germany," in England, and nearer home. It is 
sharp weather, and the bare-walled, bare-floored, 
and unwarmed interior is eminently appropriate 
to a fast, as indeed it would be to a vigil, or a 
flagellation, or any other form of human penance. 
It is afternoon and the second service of the day is 
about to be held. The worshipers, — men in jack- 
boots, many-caped coats, some carrying muffs ; and 
women well-mittened and hooded, and armed with 
foot-warmers, — file in and take their places on hard 
wooden benches without backs. The congregation 
having got itself seated with due regard to sex and 
social rank, the elders and deacons enter pews 
which face the congregation. The magistrates, in- 
cluding Vane, the Governor, seat themselves in a 
place specially set apart. John Cotton, in hood, 
greatcoat, and gloves, mounts the stairs into the 
high, pagoda-like pulpit, and the services begin. 
During the dictation of the psalm by the ruling 
elder, it is noticed that John Wheelwright is among 
the worshipers. He is here probably by the con- 
nivance of Mistress Hutchinson, and, as is cus- 
tomary in the case of visiting clergymen, is asked 
at a convenient stage of the proceedings to ' exer- 

Diman's note to Cotton's answer to Williams {Narr. Club Pub., vol. ii., 
pp. 81-83.) Cotton's own statement may be found in his The Way of 
Congregational Churches Cleared, Prince Soc. Pub., vol. xxi., pp. 357-362. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 45 

else," — that is, to address the meeting. He is 
prepared, and proceeds to make a fierce rhetorical 
onslaught upon all " those under a covenant of 
works." He denounces them roundly as Philistines 
who "fill the fountains open for the inhabitants of 
Judah with the earth of their own inventions." He 
compares " the true believers," '* the servants of the 
Lord," — in other words, the followers of Anne 
Hutchinson, — to "threshing instruments with 
teeth " that " must beat the hills as chaff." He calls 
upon them to "show themselves courageous," to 
"have their [spiritual] swords ready," and "to fight." ^ 
This rhodomontade of Wheelwright's, afterwards 
so celebrated as the Fast-day Sermon, although at 
the time delivered productive of no commotion, in 
reality sealed the fate not only of Wheelwright him- 
self but of Anne Hutchinson and the whole Anti- 
nomian party. It was tangible matter upon which 
the Theocracy could take action, and action — none 
the less effectual that it was deliberate — was taken 
accordingly. In March, Wheelwright was sum- 
moned before the General Court ; a majority of the 
Boston Church, under the leadership of Coddington 
and Aspinwall, and with the sympathy of Vane, pro- 
tested ; the protest was put aside as presumptuous, 
and, after a long and spirited debate between Vane 
and Winthrop, Wheelwright by a close vote was 
found guilty of "contempt and sedition." Sen- 
tence, however, was deferred by the court until its 
next session. In May the annual general election 
came on, and Winthrop was chosen Governor over 

'Bell's Wheelwright, 13, 15; notes 21, 25. 



46 Early Rhode Island 

young Sir Henry. The Theocracy had at length 
become thoroughly roused to a sense of peril. 
The set of opinions wherein it consisted had been 
squarely met by an opposite set of opinions, and 
no easy ideas of Toleration, no glamour surround- 
ing a young patrician, no legal caviling about 
sedition that was " constructive " and not real, no 
scruples of mercy or of pity, were now to be con- 
sidered. There had been too much of these al- 
ready. Was not the covenant of works, — that is, 
Puritanism, — challenged to the death by the cov- 
enant of grace, — that is, by Antinomianism and 
Anabaptism, by the doctrine of the inward light, by 
the very spirit of Roger Williams now in exile? 
And was it not Heaven or Hell that hung poised 
upon the issue ? To these questions no answer was 
required ; nor is it to be wondered at if, amid the ex- 
citement prevailing, " some" (to employ the circum- 
spect phrase of Winthrop) "laid hands on others." 
Events now pressed to the denouement. At the 
election which resulted in the defeat of Vane for 
Governor, Coddington was defeated for the magis- 
tracy. He was thereupon taken up by Boston and 
returned to the General Court as one of the town 
deputies along with Coggeshall and Aspinwall. 
Wheelwright still continued to preach at the Mount, 
and Mistress Hutchinson to elucidate at her con- 
versazioni. The former, when admonished, boldly 
declared that if really guilty of sedition he de- 
served death ; but that upon the question of his 
guilt he proposed to try the effect of an appeal to 
the King. In taking this stand there can be little 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 47 

doubt that present to his thought were the words 
of Paul the Apostle : " For if I be an offender, or 
have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse 
not to die ; but if there be none of these things 
whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me 
unto them. I appeal unto Caesar." Meanwhile, 
in May the court had passed an alien law, — a law 
forbidding the presence of strangers in the com- 
monwealth for a longer period than three weeks, 
without the permission of a magistrate. This was 
devised to meet the case of a shipload of im- 
migrants from Wheelwright's old home, who were 
expected shortly to arrive, and who would danger- 
ously swell the ranks of the Antinomians. The 
alien law profoundly disgusted Vane, already 
piqued by the loss of the governorship, and in 
August, — after some youthful exhibition of petu- 
lance toward Winthrop, — he set sail for England 
never to return. 

In September the first Cambridge Synod was 
held. This body, after — in the picturesque lan- 
guage of Mather — " smiting under the fifth rib 
the hydra of error," in the form of the eighty-two 
erroneous and unsafe opinions alluded to in our first 
chapter, resolved, apropos of Mistress Hutchinson, 

** that though women might meet (some few together) to pray 
and edify one another, yet (that) such a set assembly (as was 
then in practice at Boston), where sixty or more did meet every 
week, and one woman (in a prophetical way by resolving ques- 
tions of doctrine and expounding Scripture) took upon her 
the whole exercise, was . . . disorderly and without rule." 

So much having been accomplished, and having 



48 Early Rhode Island 

achieved the further point of causing John Cotton 
to "see Hght " and pass over to the majority/ 
whereby, according to Mather, he " recovered all 
his former splendor among the other stars," the 
Synod adjourned. The departure of Vane and 
the desertion of Cotton left Wheelwright defence- 
less to his enemies. The General Court met on 
November 12th, and, having arbitrarily unseated 
Coggeshall and Aspinwall, promulgated the decree, 
that " Mr. John Wheelwright being formally con- 
victed of contempt and sedition, and now justify- 
ing himself and his former practice, being to the 
disturbance of the civil peace, he is by the Court 
disfranchised and banished." From this decree 
the court refused to allow any appeal, and within 
fourteen days John Wheelwright had gone forth 
into the snows to found what is now the town of 
Exeter, New Hampshire. 

The third and culminating scene in our drama 
discloses a session of the Massachusetts General 
Court. The time is November, 1637, a few days 
only after the sentencing of Wheelwright. The 
place is the meeting-house in New Town (now 
Cambridge), a structure more primitive and drearier 
even than the sacred edifice in Boston. As is 
befitting the closing scene in a drama, well-nigh 
all the dramatis personcs, including supernumera- 

' The process would seem to have been protracted. Mather says : 
" There were five questions offered unto the great man, unto which ques- 
tions he gave answers ; and unto those answers the synod gave replies ; 
and unto those replies he gave returns ; and unto those returns the synod 
gave rejoinders ; till their coUissions fetch'd I know not whether more 
light, or love unto one another." — Magnalia, bk. vii., ch. iii., par. 5. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 49 

rles, are upon the stage. The court consists of 
some forty members, divisible into the three orders 
of magistrates, clergy, and deputies. Among the 
magistrates we readily discover Winthrop, the Gov- 
ernor and president of the court, Dudley, the 
Deputy Governor, and Endicott, grim-visaged in 
skull-cap and pointed beard. Coddington, no 
longer a magistrate, sits with the deputies ; while 
Coggeshall, no longer even a deputy, sits where 
he may. The clergy, of course, are largely repre- 
sented. We catch glimpses of Wilson, of Cotton, 
of Welde, and of Peters. Wherever there is space 
not occupied by the court, it is crowded with 
spectators. The gathering is notable ; it com- 
prises the best bigotry and brain of Massachusetts, 
and, in physiognomy and grouping alike, is Rem- 
brandtesque. In the midst of all stands Anne 
Hutchinson, — slender, pale, about to become a 
mother, — on trial for her opinions. She is treated 
with scant courtesy ; no seat — not even a stool — 
is placed at her disposal until she gives signs of 
fainting. The proceedings are strictly inquisi- 
torial. Winthrop, the president of the court, is 
also prosecuting attorney. The culprit (unpro- 
vided with counsel ^) manages her case alone. She 

^ " Even in England, under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, persons accused 
of felony were not only denied counsel, but they were not even allowed to 
produce any testimony at all in their behalf, except their own state- 
ments. . . . After their witnesses were finally admitted it was not until 
the reign of Queen Anne that they were examined under oath ; . . . and 
it was not until more than a century later that the accused were allowed to 
compel the attendance of their witnesses, ... or permitted to have the 
aid of counsel on their trial." — Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Hol- 
land, England, and Avierica, vol. ii., p. 447. 

VOL. I.— 4. 



50 Early Rhode Island 

has in attendance a few witnesses, but when 
Coggeshall, the first, is browbeaten into silence by 
Hugh Peters, no others are called. 

As for specific charges to be proved, there seem 
literally to be none. Mistress Hutchinson's real 
offence is that she has praised John Cotton and 
his doctrine of " grace," and disparaged John Wil- 
son and his doctrine of "works"; in other words, 
that she has flung in the face of the Theocracy or 
Church-State of the Puritans dissentient religious 
opinions, — something which no Theocracy can en- 
dure. But it will hardly do for the court to state 
the matter thus. Winthrop, however (forgetting 
himself), substantially does so state it when he 
says : "Your course is not to be suffered ; . . . 
we see not that any should have authority to set 
up any other exercises besides what authority hath 
already set up." ^ And she, on her part, voices 
what is substantially the answer of all time to 
this declaration, — whether the latter proceed from 
Pope, Anglican Archbishop, or Puritan Theocrat, 
— when she says: "Sir, I do not believe that to 
be so." The court makes repeated efforts to 
draw from the culprit something that will pass 
muster, at least among Theocrats, as civilly impli- 
cating ; but each time is checkmated and thrown 
into confusion by the replies given. The cause of 
the prosecution begins to look dark. The specta- 
tors stir uneasily, while apprehension fast deepen- 
ingr into anorer makes itself seen in the faces of the 
clergy, and no less in the faces of Dudley and 

' Hutchinson's Massachusetts, vol. ii., appendix ii. 



The Expulsion of the Antznomians 51 

Endicott. But just at this point (through what 
Winthrop devoutly calls " a marvellous providence 
of God ") the prosecution is rescued from its em- 
barrassment by the culprit herself. 

Anne Hutchinson is by no means a Joan of Arc. 
She is not nearly so picturesque : she has led no 
armies to battle ; has crowned no king ; has neither 
seen Michael the archangel, nor been instructed by 
the voice of St. Catherine or St. Margaret. But 
for all that she has heard a voice : it is the voice 
of the Holy Ghost in her soul, and it has spoken 
to her very much as did the voices of the saints to 
the Maid of Orleans. What it said she now pro- 
ceeds to make known to her inquisitors : 

" I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah. I am at his 
appointment for the bounds of my habitation are cast in 
Heaven. I fear none but the Great Jehovah, who hath fore- 
told me these things, and I do verily believe that he will 
deliver me out of your hands. Therefore take heed how you 
proceed against me, for I know that for this you go about 
to do to me, God will ruin you, and your posterity, and this 
whole State." 

" How do you know," asks one of the magis- 
strates, in almost the exact words of Beaupere 
questioning Joan of Arc, " that it was God that 
did reveal these things to you, and not Satan ? " 

" How did Abraham know," comes the answer, 
" that it was God that bid him offer his son ? " 

" By an immediate voice ! " exclaims Dudley in 
triumph ; and hereupon there ensues between the 
magistrates and clergy a veritable tumult of con- 
gratulation. The enthusiast before them, by 



52 Early Rhode Island 

admitting that she receives revelations, has convic- 
ted herself of Anabaptism, and — like a Miinster fa- 
natic — of being a foe to civil society, — in other 
words, has civilly implicated herself. " God hath 
made her to lay open herself and the ground of all 
these [Antinomian] disturbances to be by revela- 
tions, . . . and this hath been the ground of all 
these tumults and troubles," remarks Winthrop. 

" The disturbances that have come among the 
Germans have been all grounded upon revelations," 
observes Dudley, "and [continuing] they that have 
vented them have stirred up their hearers to take 
up arms against their prince, and to cut the throats 
of one another. And [suspiciously] whether the 
devil may inspire the same into their hearts here, I 
know not." 

It is with difficulty that one masters the wish that 
Roger Williams might have been present at this 
farce and have held a brief in behalf of the frail 
culprit. But although he is not here, although at 
this very time he is painfully hewing out a habita- 
tion for himself in the wilderness, something of 
his spirit is here, and of the spirit of the common- 
wealth which he is founding. William Codding- 
ton, who thus far has maintained almost unbroken 
silence, now rises, and, disregarding a rebuke by 
Winthrop, says : 

** I do not for my part see any equity in all your proceed- 
ings. Here is no law of God that she [Anne Hutchinson] 
hath broken, nor any law of the country that she hath broken. 
Therefore she deserves no censure. And if she says that the 
Elders preach as the Apostles did [before the ascension] why 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 53 

they preached a covenant of grace, and what wrong is that to 
them [the Elders] ? . . . therefore, I pray, consider what 
you do, for here is no law of God or man broken." * 

These words, brave though they be, are, of course, 
entirely without avail ; and the court, now fairly 
beside itself with fanaticism, votes with but two dis- 
senting voices (Coddington's and that of another 
Boston deputy) that " the wife of Mr. William 
Hutchinson, being convented for traducing the 
ministers and their ministry in this country, she 
delivered voluntarily her revelations for her ground, 
and that she should be delivered, and the Court 
ruined with their posterity, and thereupon was 
banished." 

Now the whole point of the foregoing piece of 
dramatic incident consists, — at least for the pur- 
poses of Rhode Island history, — in the thorough] 
demonstration which it affords that John Wheel- 
wright, Anne Hutchinson, and the Antinomians in 
general, suffered at the hands of the Puritans be- 
cause of their opinions upon religion. In the case 
of Wheelwright, it is true, the decree recites that the 
culprit was guilty of sedition ; but how largely pro 
forma this recital was, appears from the contem- 
porary observation of Winthrop that Wheelwright 
"was not suspected of any such purpose otherwise 
than by consequent " ; that is, otherwise than as 
"his reading and experience might have told him 
how dangerous it is to heat people's affections."^ 
And in the case of Anne Hutchinson, it is seen to 

' Hutchinson's Massachusetts, vol. ii., appendix ii. 

' The Short Story of the Antinomians^ (Prince Soc. ed.) p. 53. 



54 Early Rhode Island 

have been even more difficult for the court to find 
a basis civilly for their action. In order to do so 
at all, they were compelled to magnify an idle rev- 
elation, — a revelation so idle that, as Coddington 
plainly intimated, it was seized upon by the court 
only as a flimsy pretext and a last resort, — into a 
menace to the public peace. 

But in this year 1637, when Puritan Massachu- 
setts was thus ruthlessly practising persecution 
against dissenters, what was the growing attitude 
of that part of the world with which Massachusetts 
was most closely allied toward the principle of re- 
ligious Toleration ? What vv^as the growing atti- 
tude of England ; and what had long been the 
attitude of Holland ? To this question an answer 
would hardly seem to be required. It has already 
been seen that Holland was the very nursery of 
Toleration. And as for England, was not Tolera- 
tion at this precise moment putting Laud and 
Strafford to their utmost to cope with it ?^ Had it 
not bred up Roger Williams and Sir Henry Vane ? 
and was it not on the point of introducing to man- 
kind champions still more redoubtable in John 
Milton and Oliver Cromwell ? It would appear 
then, I take it, that Massachusetts in confirming 
itself (by the practice of systematic persecution) as 
a Theocracy at this period was assuming a position 

' " There have been more books writ, sermons preaclied, words spoken, 
besides plottings and actings for a Toleration, within these four last years, 
than for all other things ; every day now brings forth Books for a Tolera- 
tion." — Edwards's Gangrcena (1646), p. 59; Lecky's History of Raliojzalism, 
pp. 75-86. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 55 

squarely antagonistic to the time-spirit ; was be- 
coming already at birth an anachronism.^ 

■As early as 1643, the Scotch Presbyterian, Robert Baillie — himself a 
hater of heretics — wrote {Letters, vol. i., pp. 17, 18): "Only they in 
New England are more strict and rigid than we or any church to suppress 
by the power of the magistrate all who are not of their way, to banishment 
ordinarily and presently even to death lately or perpetual slavery." [The 
case of Samuel Gorton.] Again, in 1652, Sir Richard Saltonstall — one of 
the original Bay magistrates — wrote to John Cotton {Hutchinson Coll., 
pp. 401-407); " It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things 
are reported daily of your tyranny and persecutions in New England, as 
that you fine whip and imprison men for their consciences." [The case 
of Clarke, Crandall, and Holmes.] Then again, in 1669, " Dr. Goodwyne, 
Dr. Owen, Mr. Nye, Mr. Caryl, and nine other very reverend Puritan 
ministers in England " wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts, saying, 
among other things : " We only make it our hearty request to you that you 
would trust God with his truths and ways so far as to suspend all rigorous 
proceedings in corporal restraints as punishments on persons that dissent 
from you and practice the principle of their dissent without danger or dis- 
turbance to the civil peace of the place" (Mather's Magnalia, bk. vii., 
ch. iv., par. 4). Moreover, a significant hint as to the patent reactionary- 
ism of Massachusetts at this period is furnished by the title-page to John 
Clarke's /// Newes from New England (London, 1652) : " wherein is de- 
clared that while Old England is becoming nezv. New England is becoming 
oldr 

Mr. Douglas Campbell, in his book. The Puritan in Holland, England, 
and America, maintains (vol. ii., p. 206) that the Massachusetts Puritan 
persecuted, not because he was a Puritan and Theocrat, but because he 
was an Englishman. He says at page 415 of the volume named : " The 
Puritans of Massachusetts with all their shortcomings were far in advance 
of the High Churchmen at home in their treatment of witches, Baptists, 
and Quakers." And again : " The severe Puritanical laws of Massachu- 
setts were in some features mildness itself compared with those enacted at 
an earlier period for the government of Virginia." He then cites Dale's 
Code for Virginia, under which absence from church on Sunday, without 
a good excuse, was a capital offence, etc. 

It may freely be conceded to Mr. Campbell that the penalties prescribed 
by the Puritans may be paralleled, and even exceeded, in the penalties at 
times inflicted by secular States ; but it should be remembered that the gist 
of the charge against the Puritans is not that they were cruel (although 
cruel they were), but that, being organized as a Theocracy, they stood com- 
mitted to the doctrine and practice that mere sins (including opinions), — 
that is, sins in themselves, apart from their effect upon society, — are to be 
punished by society. In other words, what should be remembered is, that 



56 Early Rhode Island 

And what is more, in all this the new common- 
wealth was wholly at odds with the logic even of 
its own existence, — with its own raison d'itre. 
A philosopher of the year 1637, unacquainted with 
actual Massachusetts, would confidently have said : 

" If Toleration is what is sought, look for it in the Bay- 
State, There is a commonwealth erected in a new world and 
upon virgin soil ; free from the entanglements of ecclesiasti- 
cism, and free in particular from the incubus of persecution ; 
for it was to escape both ecclesiasticism and persecution that 
its Puritan founders quitted their native land."* 

And undoubtedly this was the reasoning of many 
of those who came to Massachusetts between the 
years 1630 and 1640. It was the reasoning of 

while odium may, and frequently does, attach to a secular State because of 
acts of outrage upon individual right and conscience, it attaches to a The- 
ocracy necessarily and always, because outrage upon individual right and 
conscience is implied in a Theocracy's very existence. 

' The original Massachusetts Puritans were highly sensitive to the charge of 
persecution, showing that they felt the inconsistency of their course. Thus 
Cotton and Edward Winslow tried hard to prove, the former that Roger 
Williams did not suffer particularly in being banished, banishment being 
merely " enlargement " ; and the latter, that if he did suffer, it was solely 
for political offences {Narragansett Club Pub., vol. ii., p. 19; Hypocrisy 
Unmasked, p. 65). Moreover, the good Winthrop was careful to explain 
that Wheelright and Coggeshall and Anne Hutchinson all were dealt with 
for political and not religious crimes {Short Story of the Antinoinians, 
Prince Society ed., pp. 150, 165). And even the illiberal Thomas Welde 
was moved to say: The magistrates were "driven with sad hearts to 
give them [the Antinomians] up to Satan" and did not do so "simply for 
their opinions (for which I find we have been slanderously traduced), but 
the chiefest cause of their censure was their miscarriages persisted in with 
great obstinacy " (Preface to the Short Story, p. 92). The later Puritans 
— those of the witchcraft period more especially — were not so mindful of 
persecutions recently endured, and hence were not so sensitive to accusa- 
tion. See Election Serjuon of the Rev. Urian Cakes, President of Harvard 
College, delivered in 1673, and Brief Animadversions by the Rev. Samuel 
Willard, 1681, both quoted by C. F. Adams, Massachusetts: Its Historians. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 57 

Roger Williams, of Sir Henry Vane/ and of John 
Clarke^; and had it not been for his exaggerated 
reverence for the clergy ^ it might also have been 
the reasoning of John Winthrop. These men, 
therefore, — Williams, Vane, Clarke ; also perhaps 
Coddington ; and, in an indirect, unwitting sort 
of way, persons such as Wheelwright and Anne 
Hutchinson, — were the representatives and instru- 
ments of the time-spirit — of the spirit of Tolera- 
tion — in America in 1637. Their expulsion from 
Massachusetts meant simply that this spirit, not 
finding a welcome in the Puritan Commonwealth 
(the place where of all others, logically, a welcome 
should have been found), must domesticate itself 
elsewhere. It meant the unqualified surrender of 
Massachusetts to the Theocracy, and hence its 
relegation in the march of events to " the rear and 
the slaves " ; but, more than anything else, it meant 
the rise of a new State embodying the time-spirit 
and broadening it ; a State by its very existence 
more a menace to the Puritan Theocracy than ever 
were Roger Williams and the Antinomians before 

• " Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 
What severs each, thou hast learned." 

Milton's Sonnet to Vane. 
^ " I thought it not strange to see men differ about matters of Heaven, 
for I expect no less upon Earth : but to see that they were not able so to 
bear each with other in their different understandings and consciences, 
as in those utmost parts of the world to live peaceably together, whereupon 
I moved the latter, forasmuch as the land was before us and wide enough, 
with the proffer of Abraham to Lot, and for peace sake, to turn aside to 
the right hand, or to the left." — III Newes from New England (Massachu- 
setts Historical Collection, 4th ser., vol, ii., pp. 23, 24). 

^ " I honored a faithful minister in my heart, and could have kissed his 
feet." — Life and Letters of Winthrop, vol. i., p. 61. 



58 Early Rhode Island 

their banishment ; a State which, though sprung 
from the Theocracy as from the loins of a parent, 
was its child only by reaction, and which one day 
confronting it — like CEdipus confronting Laius — 
might destroy it in the way. 

Among the final acts of the General Court of 
Massachusetts with respect to the Antinomian 
aofitation, there were three which had a direct 
bearing upon the selection of Aquidneck as the 
second point of germination for Rhode Island. 
These acts were : first, the banishment, early in 
November, 1637, of William Aspinwall, as the re- 
puted author of the Boston remonstrance against 
the punishment of Wheelwright ; second, the decree 
of November 15, 1637, requiring certain of the 
Antinomians, including the estimable John Clarke, 
to surrender their arms, as persons liable through 
the seductions of Mistress Hutchinson (Dud- 
ley's handiwork would seem to be visible here) 
" to make, upon some revelation, some sudden 
irruption upon those that differ from them in 
judgment"; and third, the order of March, 1638, 
directing William Coddington, and those of his 
following, to carry out within two weeks their pre- 
viously announced intention of quitting the Bay 

for a more congenial place of abiding.^ As early 

f 

' " Mr. Willi Coddington, Mr. John Coggeshall, Goo: William Baulston, 
Edward Hutchinson, Samuell Wilbore, John Porter, John Compton, 
Henry Bull, Philip Shearman, Willi Freeborne, and Richard Carder, 
these having license to depart, summons is to go out for them to appear (if 
they bee not gone before) at the next court, the third month, to answer 
such things as shall bee objected." — Mass. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 223. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 59 

as the preceding autumn, a party of Antinomians 
under Clarke had gone northward in search of 
a suitable spot for a settlement, but the rigors 
of a New England winter had chilled their ar- 
dor. These, now returning, combined with the 
followers of Coddington, and the whole, includ- 
ing William Aspinwall, John Coggeshall, and 
William Hutchinson, the husband of Anne Hutch- 
inson, under the joint leadership of Coddington 
and Clarke, took ship for the south in the 
general direction of Long Island and Delaware 
Bay. As their ship was about to double Cape 
Cod — a large and dangerous cape, Clarke calls 
it — it was decided to go ashore, visit Roger Williams 
at Providence, and having profited by his coun- 
sel to meet the ship on the southern side of the 
cape. 

The journey to Providence was made. Wil- 
liams " courteously and lovingly received " the 
wanderers and suggested that they settle either at 
Sowams (now Warren) or at Aquidneck. For the 
purpose of ascertaining whether either of these 
places "fell in any other patent," it being their 
resolution to "go out of them all," a party con- 
sisting of William Coddington, John Clarke, and 
one other, with Williams as guide, set out for 
Plymouth. The magistrates " very lovingly gave 
them a meeting," and, while asserting a distinct 
claim to Sowams as " the garden of their patent, 
and the flower in the garden," advised them with 
a cheerful countenance " to settle upon Aquid- 
neck, where they should be looked upon as free. 



6o Early Rhode Island 

and as loving neighbors and friends."^ The Httle 
party of four then returned to Providence, and 
the principal members of the company under 
Coddington and Clarke immediately entered into 
a compact of government. 

The compact bears date "the 7th day of the 
first month, 1638." On the 24th day of the 
same first month (March), through the direct 
instrumentality of Roger Williams, the title to 
Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, and to the grass of 
the other islands in the bay (excepting Chiba- 
chuwesa, — later called Prudence, — already sold to 
Winthrop and Williams jointly"), was obtained for 
the company from the Narragansett Indians at the 
price of forty fathoms of white beads. A deed^ 
for the purchase was executed by the two sa- 
chems of the Narragansetts, Canonicus and Mianto- 
nomi, in the name of " Mr. Coddington and his 

' Clarke's /// Newes frotn New England^ Mass. Hist. Coll., 4tliser., vol. 
ii., pp. 23, 24, 

' This island had originally been given by Canonicus to John Oldham 
upon the promise of the latter to establish there a trading station ; but 
with Oldham's death the gift was transferred to Williams and Winthrop 
(_Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 70-71). A deed for the island was made 
by Canonicus and Miantonomi to Roger Williams and John Winthrop 
on "the 20th of the gth month of ye first year ye Pequods were sub- 
dued." On " the 22d of the 2d month, in the fourteenth year of our 
Sovereign Lord, King Charles," Williams conveyed his interest to John 
Throckmorton, and Throckmorton conveyed to Richard Parker of Boston. 
In 1678, Williams states that he sold his half of Prudence to Mr. Parker, 
" my honored dear friend of Boston " ; that Winthrop gave his half to 
his son Stephen, and that he hears that the whole "is gone to Mr. Paine 
of Boston, deceased" {Newport Land Ev., vol. i., pp. 207, 304). The 
foregoing is of interest in connection with the history of Prudence as 
"Sophy Manor," related at the end of Part II., Chapter XV. 

^ The deed is set out in full in the appendix to Callender, R. I. Hist. 
Coll., vol. iv., p. 214. 



The Expulsion of the Antinomians 6i 

friends united under him." The Narragansetts, 
as Williams himself testified, were " very shy and 
jealous of selling the lands," and did so only " by 
the love and favor which that honored gentleman, 
Sir Henry Vane, and myself had with the great 
Sachem Miantonomi." 

But this brings us to the interesting details of 
Roger Williams's general relations with the Narra- 
gansett Indians, as the tribe from which he ob- 
tained not only Aquidneck for the Antinomian 
refugees, but the site of Providence itself for his 
own company ; and these details will constitute the 
matter for our next chapter. 

Note. — In any estimate of the Puritans, the following lines 
by Peter Folger, maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, 
are of no little value, Folger came to Massachusetts from 
Norwich, England, — that home of liberal thought, — in 1635. 
He settled first at Martha's Vineyard, but in 1663 removed to 
Nantucket, where in 1690 he died, respected and confided in 
by all. The poem from which the lines are taken is entitled 
" Looking Glass for the Times," and was written (though not 
printed, it is hardly necessary to say) prior to 1675. It vents 
no private grievance, but merely records the writer's convic- 
tion that the wars with the Indians were a judgment of God 
upon the Puritans for their theocratic, persecuting methods. 

" But may we know the Counsellors 
That brought our Rulers sin ? 



" They were the tribe of Ministers, 
As they are said to be, 
Who always to our Magistrates 
Must be the eyes to see. 



62 Early Rhode Island 

" New England, they are like the Jews, 
As like as like can be ; 



** Though you do many prayers make, 
And Fasting add thereto, 
Yet, if your hands be full of blood, 
All this will never do." 

Rider's Hist. Tract No. i6. 



CHAPTER III 

ROGER WILLIAMS AND THE NARRAGANSETT INDIANS. 

IN the years 1636 and 1637, the intertribal poli- 
tics of the Indians of lower New England 
stood thus : The Connecticut Mohegans, fierce 
and restless in their strait between the Hudson 
Mohawks and the Pequods of the Thames Valley, 
were eager for any alliance that would liberate 
them. The Pequods, as confessedly the leading 
Indian military power, were jealous of any other 
power that might prove equal or superior, and thus 
destroy their prestige. The Narragansetts, also a 
strong power in a military sense, but to some ex- 
tent an industrial and commercial power likewise, 
and governed by a chief sachem of exceptional 
intelligence, were jealous of other powers, but at 
the same time willing to weigh diplomatically the 
advantages and disadvantages of amicable relations 
therewith. The Wampanoags or Pokanokets, de- 
cimated by a recent scourge of the smallpox, and 
thus through diminution of numbers made tribu- 
tary to the Narragansetts, had already embraced 
with joy the league with Plymouth, as a means, 
first, of protection, and next of enhanced dignity. 

63 



64 Early Rhode Island 

It is the opinion of Dr. J. G. Palfrey that the total 
number of Indians in New England, at the period 
under consideration, did not exceed 50,000 ; and 
that of these lower New England, — that is, the 
region now comprised in the states of Connecticut 
and Rhode Island, — contained perhaps one half. 
The Narraofansetts were more numerous than either 
the Mohegans or Pequods, consisting perhaps of 
eight or ten thousand souls, of whom from fifteen 
hundred to two thousand were fighting men. This 
nation, when Roger Williams appeared among them 
and began to lay the foundations of Providence, 
" had never been reduced by pestilence or humbled 
by defeat."^ 

The coming of Williams was, as we have seen 
in Chapter I., inspired purely by a desire " to do 
the natives good," — that is, to secure their con- 
version. Nor was this desire on his part one 
peculiar to himself among the English of the 
seventeenth century. Even the charter of the 
Massachusetts Bay Company, which Williams so 
cordially disliked, contained a provision, 

" for the directing, ruling and disposeing of all other Matters 
and Thinges whereby our said People, Inhabitants there, may 
be soe religiously, peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their 
good Life and orderlie Conversacon maie wynn and incite the 

' The name Narragansett, in its varying forms of Naiganeog and Naigan- 
set, signifies, according to Trumbull (IVarr, Club Pub., vol. i., p. 22), 
"the people of the point," or the " territory about the point," — perhaps 
Point Judith. For a full and discriminating account of the Narragansetts, 
see H. C. Dorr's paper in R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. vii., p. 137. 



Roger Willia77is and the Narragansetts 65 

Natives of the Country to the Knowledge and Obedience of 
the onlie true God and Savior of Mankinde, and the Christian 
Faythe, which in our Royall Intencon, and the Adventurers 
free Profession, is the principal Ende of this Plantation." 

Moreover, as Williams states in his introduction to 
The Key into the Language of A77ierica, published 
in 1643, such questions as : " What Indians have 
been converted? What have the Enoflish done in 
those parts ? What hopes of the Indians receiving 
the knowledge of Christ?" were the great inquiry 
of all men. So true was this that, as time went on, 
and little seemed to be achieved by Massachusetts 
toward preaching the gospel to the gentiles, the 
neglect of duty was made matter of severe animad- 
version. Our acquaintance, Robert Baillie, the 
Scotchman, thus puts the case in his Dissuasive 
from the Errors of the Time, printed in 1645 • 
" Only Master Williams, in the time of his banish- 
ment from among them [the Independents of New 
England], did essay what could be done with these 
desolate souls." 

And, as far as Williams was concerned, there 
could indeed be no ground of reproach for neglect 
of duty. He himself, in The Key, alludes to the 
matter of Indian conversion as one " much pre- 
tended by all New English," but with respect to 
which he has uprightly labored to "suite his en- 
deavours" to his " pretences," — a claim borne out 
by Wood, who, sailing from Massachusetts in 1633, 
published the next year in London his New Eng- 
land's Prospect, in which he speaks of Williams as, 
even at that early day, one who " in speciall good 

VOL. I.— 5. 



66 Early Rhode Islajtd 

intent of doing good to their [the Indians'] soules, 
hath spent much time in attaining to their lan- 
guage, wherein he is so good a proficient that he 
can speake to their understanding, and they to his ; 
much loving and respecting him for his love and 
counesell." ^ In view of the high value of the 
results, both for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 
which flowed from the relig-ious zeal of Rogfer 
Williams in behalf of the Indians, — particularly in 
behalf of the Narragansetts, — it becomes impor- 
tant to note with some care the steps to which it 
gave rise. 

A few weeks only after his arrival in New Eng- 
land, February, 1630-31, Williams accepted a call 
as teacher to the church at Salem. He left Salem 
the same year, and established himself as assistant 
to the Rev. Ralph Smith at Plymouth. During 
the summer of 1633 he returned to Salem, where 
he served as assistant to the pastor, Mr. Skelton, 
and, upon the death of the latter in 1634, suc- 
ceeded him in the capacity of both pastor and 
teacher. It was while at Plymouth, probably in 
the year 1632, that Williams began the study of the 
Algonquin tongue, and, as a pre-requisite thereto, 
to cultivate the friendship of Massasoit and Canon- 
icus, the leading chiefs of the vicinity. He went 
fearlessly among the aborigines, having, as he tells 
us, " a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in 
their filthy smoky holes," and " to dig into their 
barbarous rockie speech." His position as public 

' Williams is not mentioned by name, but the allusion is manifestly ta 
him. 



Roger Williams and the Narragansetts 67 

speaker at Plymouth and at Salem caused him to 
be regarded by the Indians as a sachem among 
the English, and in due time he was admitted to 
the confidence of the Indian friend of the English 
par excellence, Massasoit. If in all this the young 
missionary manifested a dove-like harmlessness, he 
was by no means lacking in the accompanying 
wisdom ; for he was careful to sweeten his inter- 
course with the natives by "gifts" and "tokens," 
"sparing no cost towards them." The outcome 
was, that in 1634 and 1635, — foreseeing possibly 
some rupture with the Puritans, — he was able to 
negotiate with Canonicus and with the old mon- 
arch's heir by adoption, Miantonomi,^ an agreement 
for lands beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. 
This agreement was made with Canonicus rather 
than with Massasoit, for the reason that, as we 
have seen, the latter as Chief Sachem of the 
Wampanoags was tributary to Canonicus as Chief 
Sachem of the Narragansetts. But, aside from 
being Chief Sachem of the Narragansetts, what 
was Canonicus ? What was his attitude toward 
Williams, and what did that attitude signify ? 

In 1637 Canonicus (or Caunoiinicus, as Williams 
sometimes more phonetically writes the name ^) 
had already reached the patriarchal age of three- 
score and ten years. For nearly a lifetime he had 

' Roger Williams usually writes the name Miantunnomu. — " Key," R. I. 
Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 120. 

' Canonicus, according to a tradition reported by Hutchinson (Hist. Mass., 
vol. i., p. 458 n.), was the grandson of a great Narragansett sachem, Tash- 
tassuk. This sachem had only two children, a son and a daughter, and 



68 Early Rhode Isla^id 

held the proud position of Chief Sachem of the 
Narragansetts. He was possessed of marked acu- 
men and foresight, and from the day — nearly 
twenty years before the time here treated of — 
when the sloops of the Dutch West India Com- 
pany began to put into Narragansett Bay, he had 
concentrated his mind upon the problem of the 
white man and the Indian in that part of North 
America which his tribe occupied. The substance 
of his meditations would seem to have been that 
" his people were now confronted with a race 
vigorous, enterprising, united, with resources far 
exceeding his own, — before whom an Indian con- 
federacy [should one be formed to resist them], 
must be as a rope of sand." " He knew that the 
Mohawks, a nation greater than [the Narragan- 
setts], either would not or could not expel the 
Dutch from Manhattan ; . . . that a race whose 
pioneers could carry multitudes across a sea im- 
passable to him, and fabricate utensils of iron, and 
set their houses upon foundations of stone, who 
had flocks and herds and probably other resources 
yet unknown, could not be starved, or exterminated, 
or driven away."^ The only thing to be done, 
therefore, was to accept the situation, and, by 
playing off Dutchman against Englishman, — Man- 
hattan aofainst Massachusetts, — to make such com- 
mercial gains as would in a measure compensate 

not being able to match them according to their dignity, he joined them 
together in matrimony, a union from which sprang four sons, the eldest of 
whom was Canonicus. The tradition has its counterpart among the tradi- 
tions of other tribes. 

' Dorr, R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. vii., p. 162. 



Roger Williams and the Narragansetts 69 

his nation for whatever curtailment of indepen- 
dence the presence of the intruding Caucasian 
might compel. No more sage conclusion was ever 
reached by an Indian sachem ; and what is the 
more remarkable, it was a conclusion of pure rea- 
son, reached contrary to instinct and inclination, 
and against the muttered protest of every inferior 
sachem of the tribe. 

Canonicus, says Williams, was " shy of the Eng- 
lish to his latest breath." And again he says : " At 
my first coming to them, Canonicus {iJiorostcs cequce 
ac barbarits senex) was very sour, and accused the 
English and myself for sending the plague among 
them." But it also is the testimony of Williams 
that " Canounicus, the old high Sachem of the 
Narragansett Bay, once in a solemne oration to 
myself, in a solemne assembly, using this word, 
said : ' I have never suffered any wrong to be of- 
fered to the English since they landed, nor never 
will.' " ^ Many a North American Indian since 
Canonicus has had the acumen to perceive that the 
encroachments of the white man portended the ex- 
tinction of the savage. This thought — to say 
nothing as to how far it may have animated Philip 
of Mount Hope — lay at the root of the conspiracy 
of the princely Pontiac and inspired both Tecumseh 
and Black Hawk. But the instances are certainly 
few where, with a thought so dark as this agitating 
his breast, a proud sachem has smothered his re- 
sentment, has made the best of unalterable circum- 
stances, and, despite the opposition of his own 

' Roger Williams's "Key," R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 64. 



7o Early Rhode Island 

people, has kept faith and maintained peace. In 
Canonicus, indeed, we have exempHfied Indian sto- 
icism at its best. The old statesman, having once 
looked fate resolutely in the face and accepted it, 
did not afterwards falter, — neither in the presence 
of the Pequod ambassadors, nor, severest test of 
all, when the English permitted Miantonomi to be 
put to death. As Mr. Dorr justly observes : " He 
shares with Sir Henry Vane the claim to be es- 
teemed the most serviceable friend of [Rhode Isl- 
and, if not of New England], in its early days." 

The sage monarch of the Narragansetts having 
reached the determination that peace must be kept 
with the Enoflish, it followed as a matter of course 
that Roger Williams, the English sachem and dip- 
lomatic agent, as he was believed to be,^ must be 
treated with distinguished consideration. Williams 
himself always thought that his cordial reception by 
Canonicus (and, through him, by Miantonomi) was 
the result of affection purely. Highly affectionate 
in his own nature, he was ever ready to discover 
answering sentiments of regard in others. In his 
view. Governor Winthrop " tenderly loved him "; 
John Cotton looked on him with affection ; even 
acerbic old Mrs. Sadleir, the daughter of Sir Ed- 
ward Coke, whose recorded wish was that some 
day Tyburn might give him welcome, was " his 
much honored friend " ; while, as for Canonicus, the 
kindly patriarch " loved him as his son to his last 
gasp," conferring upon him everything " by gift " 

^ Statement in letter by Williams to Governor Winthrop (June, 1638), 
Narr, Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 104, 105. 



Roger Williams and the Narragansetts 71 

and " favor," even to Rhode Island (Aquidneck), 
which was "purchased by love." Nor was Wil- 
liams by any means wholly mistaken as to the im- 
portant part which affection for him played in his 
relations with the Narragansetts. It played a part 
second only to that of enlightened self-interest — 
self-interest, that is, as conceived by Canonicus. 

The fact that Williams was persona grata at the 
Narragansett court, and that he spoke Algonquin, 
was, notwithstanding his condition as outcast, 
promptly turned to advantage by Massachusetts to 
insure the neutrality of Canonicus and Miantonomi 
in the conflict with the Pequods which was now 
(September, 1636) on the point of breaking out. 

The first considerable aggression committed by 
the Pequods against the English was in 1633, in 
the murder of Captain John Stone, a Virginian, 
and six companions, while stopping in the Connec- 
ticut Valley to trade with the Dutch, on their way 
home from Massachusetts. Following upon the 
murder of Stone, came, on July 20, 1636, the mur- 
der of John Oldham, an adventurous Massachusetts 
trader, by the Indians of Block Island, who (being 
Nyantics) were tributary to the Narragansetts. 
The Massachusetts Government, feeling that the 
seriousness of the general Indian situation de- 
manded some definite understanding with the Nar- 
ragansetts, now, August 8th, sent an embassy to 
treat with Canonicus. The sachem received this 
visit of state cordially, but at the same time with 
marked dignity. He evidently intended to impress 



72 Early Rhode Island 

the English both with the importance of his nation 
and the firmness of his own government, and he 
thoroughly succeeded. It is the remark of Win- 
throp, to whom as Governor the embassy made 
report, that there was observed in Canonicus " much 
state, great command over his men, and marvellous 
wisdom in his answers, and the carriage of the 
whole treaty, clearing himself and his neighbors of 
the murder of Oldham, and offering assistance for 
revenge of it, yet upon very safe and wary con- 
ditions." 

At this point, however, the Pequods, perceiving 
that " they had made themselves to stink before 
the New English Israel," sought — at the instigation 
of their chief, Sassacus — to draw the Narragansetts 
into friendship with themselves. Roger Williams, 
therefore, to whom Winthrop had obligingly writ- 
ten on July 7th, "to look to himself if we should 
have occasion to make war upon the Narragan- 
setts," was now appealed to, both by Winthrop the 
Governor, and by the Council of Massachusetts, 
" to use his utmost and speediest endeavors to 
break and hinder the league labored for by the 
Pequods against the English, excusing the not 
sending of company and supplies by the haste of 
the business." So urgent, indeed, was the case, 
that Williams (as graphically set forth in the har- 
monious sentences of his letter to Major Mason^) 
immediately, by the help of the Lord, " put his 
life into his hand, and scarce acquainting his wife, 
shipped himself all alone in a poor canoe, and cut 

' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 333. 



Roger Williams and the Narragansetts T^ 

through a stormy wind with great seas, every min- 
ute in hazard of Hfe, to the sachem's house," — the 
house of Canonicus. Here he spent three anxious 
days and nights, lodging and mixing with the 
bloody Pequod ambassadors, whose arms reeked 
with the blood of those murdered and massacred 
on the Connecticut, and from whom, as he says, he 
could but nightly look for their bloody knives at 
his own throat also. 

A substantial result of this daring diplomacy was 
seen on September 21st, in the personal appear- 
ance of Miantonomi in Boston, in response to a 
request by Governor Winthrop, prepared to con- 
clude a definite treaty of alliance between the Nar- 
ragansetts and the English. The treaty signed 
consisted of the following stipulations, as noted in 
Winthrop's yotcrnal : 

"(i) firm peace between the Narragansetts and the English 
of all the plantations ; (2) neither party to make peace with 
the Pequods without the other's consent ; (3) not to harbor 
the Pequods ; (4) to put to death or deliver over murderers ; 
(5) to return fugitive servants ; (6) we to give them notice 
when we go against the Pequods, and they to send us some 
guides ; (7) free trade between us ; (8) none of them to come 
near our plantations during the wars with the Pequods, with- 
out some Englishman or known Indian ; (9) to continue to 
the posterity of both parties." 

After the treaty was executed, and the visiting 
sachem and his attendants had been entertained 
at dinner, they were " escorted out of town and 
dismissed with a volley of shot," it being agreed 
that a copy of the treaty should be sent " to Mr. 



74 Eaj^ly Rhode Island 

Williams, who could best interpret " it to the In- 
dian comprehension. 

Heeding still further the Macedonian appeal of 
the Puritans, Williams, throughout the fall and 
winter of 1636 and the spring of 1637, kept the 
Massachusetts Government constantly informed of 
the movements amongf the Indians. His most im- 
portant communication was written in May, 1637. 
It states that Canonicus has been "very sour" 
against the English, and that the writer has had 
to bestir himself in order to " sweeten " the old 
sachem's " spirit." It states further : " Mianto- 
nomi has kept his barbarous court lately at my 
house, and with him I have far better dealing. 
He takes some pleasure to visit me and has sent 
me word of his coming over again some eight days 
hence." The letter then proceeds to set forth in 
detail the Narragansett idea of how a campaign 
against the Pequods should be conducted: (i) 
there should be a reconnaissance on the part of the 
English, followed by a feigned retreat to draw the 
enemy into fancied security ; (2, 3) vessels should 
not approach the Pequod coast, but should rendez- 
vous at Nyantic (near Point Judith) ; for if 
observed, the whole Pequod nation would take 
refuge in Ohomowanke, or Owl Swamp ; (5, 6) 
the assault upon the Pequod stronghold (a stock- 
aded fort on the river Mystic) should be by night, 
and flight to the swamp should be cut off by a 
force placed in ambush. Williams concludes this 
letter with a sketch or rude view, as he calls it, of 
the Pequod position, and with the following re- 



Roger Williams and the Narragansetts 75 

quest, or, more accurately under the circumstances, 
command from Canonicus : " I find that Canonicus 
would gladly accept of a box of eight or ten 
pounds of sugar, and indeed he told me he would 
thank Mr. Governor for a box full." 

The movement against the Pequods — in view 
of which the letter sent by Williams in May, 1637, 
was written — was the immediate result of an ap- 
peal to New England for protection made by Lion 
Gardiner, the commander at Fort Saybrook (Con- 
necticut), early in April. This appeal, so far as 
Massachusetts was concerned, had been met by 
the despatch (on April loth) of that Falstaff of 
New England, Captain John Underhill, with 
twenty " lusty men well armed." Following close 
upon this force came Captain John Mason from 
Connecticut with ninety men under Lieutenant 
Seeley, and some eighty Mohegans under the re- 
doubtable Uncas. 

The advice given by the Narragansetts regard- 
ing the conduct of the campaign, and conveyed by 
Williams to Vane and Winthrop in his letter writ- 
ten in May, was evidently sound. So manifest 
indeed was the force of the reasons dictating it 
that Mason, who was in chief command, disregard- 
ing positive instructions to land his expedition in 
Pequod Harbor, returned to Narragansett Bay and 
landed near the dwelling place of Canonicus. In 
this way the English unwittingly followed in detail 
the suggestions presented by Williams, and with 
the exact results predicted ; for the Pequods at 
Mystic Fort, seeing the pinnaces sail by Pequod 



76 Early Rhode Islmtd 

Harbor in the direction of the Narragansetts, fan- 
cied the attack abandoned, and were lulled into 
security by that very " feigned retreat " which Wil- 
liams's communication had advised. The expedi- 
tion having landed, Mason proceeded therewith to 
Nyantic, where a force sent by Miantonomi joined 
him, and on the day following (Thursday, May 
25th) he was able to move forward accompanied 
by about five hundred Indians, all Narragansetts 
and eastern Nyantics, excepting Uncas with his 
small band of Mohegans. 

The fort on the Mystic was surprised early on 
the morning of May 26th, and taken by assault. 
The slaughter that followed was indiscriminate. 
It was made even more so by the firing of the fort, 
which was rendered necessary in order to drive the 
inmates from their places of concealment among 
the wigwams, and was performed by Mason's own 
hand. " Many were burnt," says Underbill, " men, 
women, and children. Others, forced out, came in 
troops . . . twenty and thirty at a time, 
which our soldiers received and entertained with 
the point of the sword. . . . Those that escaped 
fell into the hands of the Indians that were in the 
rear of us." The Pequod loss in this attack is given 
by Underbill at about four hundred, and by Mason 
at six or seven hundred. They agree that not 
more than six or seven of the whole number in the 
stronghold escaped. Of the English, two were 
killed and twenty wounded. Within a day or two 
the news of the victory of the New Englanders 
over the Pequods reached Roger Williams at 



Roger VVilliajns and the Nar^'agansetts jy 

Providence, and was by him promptly forwarded 
to Boston. 

The fate of the Pequod nation at the hands of 
the Puritans was Uke that of the people of Kab- 
bah at the hands of David.^ A price was set upon 
the head of every warrior, and scalp-locks and 
severed hands were almost daily brought to Hart- 
ford, and not infrequently to Boston. The women 
and children were either distributed as bond-ser- 
vants at home, and to the Narragansetts, or sold 
as slaves in the West Indies. Crowning all, on 
August 5th, the Rev. John Wilson returned from 
the front, bearing the scalp of Sassacus, — a souve- 
nir and token of brotherly admiration and esteem 
from the courteous Mohawks. 

It has been the concern of New Enofland moral- 
Ists of later years to find means wherewiih to 
reconcile the wholesale butchery at Mystic Fort, 
and subsequently, with the merciful precepts of the 
Sermon on the Mount ; but, as already indicated, 
the New England moralists of the seventeenth cen- 
tury felt no such solicitude. Their word of moral 
guidance was found not in the Sermon on the Mount, 
but in the Chronicles of David's wars and in the 
Imprecatory Psalms, and the destruction of their 
enemies was, therefore, legitimate matter for exul- 
tation. On June 15th, 1637, Winthrop recorded 
the following : " There was a day of thanksgiving 
kept in all the churches for the victory obtained 

' "And he [David] brought out the people that were in it [Rabbah] and 
cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes." — i Chron., 

XX.. 3. 



yS Early Rhode Island 

against the Pequods and for other mercies." Even 
honest Captain Mason wrote : " Thus the Lord 
was pleased to smite our enemies in the hinder 
parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance 
. . . then was our mouth filled with laug-hter and 
our tongues with singing ; thus, we may say, the Lord 
hath done o-reat thing's for us among- the heathen 
wherefore we are glad. Praise ye the Lord ! " 

Only two voices, amid all this apotheosis of 
slaughter, seem to have been raised in commiser- 
ation of the fallen, — one the voice of poor, sus- 
ceptible, erring Captain Underbill, who ventured 
to put to himself the question, " Should not Chris- 
tians have more mercy and compassion ? " and the 
other the voice of Roger Williams, who, apropos 
of the determination manifest not only to humble 
but utterly to exterminate the Pequods, wrote, on 
July 15th, to Winthrop : " I . . . fear that some 
innocent blood cries at Connecticut. Many things 
may be spoken to prove the Lord's perpetual war with 
Amalek extraordinary and mystical, but the 2 Kings 
xiv., 5, 6 Ms a bright light discovering the ordinary 
path wherein to walk and please him." And he 
adds in a postscript : " I fear the Lord's quarrel 
is not ended for which the war began, viz.: the 
little sense (I speak for the general that I can hear 
of) of their [the Indians'] souls' condition, and our 
large protestations that way." 

' " But the children of the murderers he slew not : according unto that 
which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the Lord com- 
manded saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor 
the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to 
death for his own sin." 



Roger Williams and the Narragafisetts 79 

Indeed, of all concerned in the war against the 
Pequods, it is established by common consent that 
none performed a part at once so courageous, re- 
sourceful, and disinterested, as Roger Williams. 
His labors began even before the war itself, and 
lasted till long after its close. He not only was 
the immediate and moving cause of the treaty of 
alliance between Massachusetts and the Narraoan- 

o 

setts, but when hostilities actually broke forth, al- 
though it was his desire to go to the front with the 
troops, he remained behind at Providence, at the 
earnest solicitation of the Massachusetts Govern- 
ment, and acted as " interpreter and intelligencer, 
constantly receiving and sending letters to the 
Governor and Council at Boston." He was in 
favor of decisive measures against the enemy (and 
such were unavoidable), but not of sheer merciless- 
ness sanctioned out of the Old Testament ; and 
spoke with loathing of those " dead hands " upon 
which there was reason to apprehend that the eyes 
of Puritan Boston were feasting with an unholy 
glow. 

One result of the war — a result fraught with 
fresh menace to the security of New England — 
was the elevation of the Mohegan Sachem, Uncas, 
to a place by the side of Miantonomi as a candidate 
for the favor of the English ; and with the rivalries 
of these two sachems the peace of Williams was 
troubled through several years. He, of course, 
as far as he justly could, exerted himself in behalf 
of Miantonomi ; but it is perhaps a significant cir- 
cumstance regarding the latter, at least from a 



8o Early Rhode Island 

military point of view, that, while constantly at war, 
the only known occasion upon which he risked his 
own person in battle was when he was taken pris- 
oner by Uncas as he fled headlong from the field. 
He loaned the English his men — a most unreliable 
set — in the expedition against Mystic Fort, but 
he did not (as did Uncas) lend likewise the encour- 
agement of his own presence and example. 

But this by the way. Taking all into the account, 
there is no exaorgreration in Williams's statement 
concerning himself, made in his declining years to 
Major Mason : " I had my share of service to the 
whole land in that Pequod business, inferior to 
very few that acted." Indeed, it may be said of 
him that, like Joseph thrust out of Israel, he, from 
his high place among the heathen, requited his per- 
secutors with their lives ; nor does it detract from 
his generosity that in so doing he rendered possible 
the perpetuation of that "livelie experiment" — the 
Rhode Island Commonwealth.^ 

' On July lo, 1637, Williams wrote to Governor Winthrop, mentioning 
the fact that Thomas Roberts, a soldier of the Pequod War, had been left 
at his house in a critical condition, but that his (Williams's) wife had " got 
him upon his legs, though very weak" ; whence we may know that by this 
time the exile had been joined by his family, left behind when he fled from 
Salem. 



The Principle of Freedom of Conscience in 
Religion Made by Rhode Island its Cor- 
ner-stone, and the Struggle for 
Political Individualism Begun 



VOL. I.— 6. 

8t 



CHAPTER IV 
THE MAINLAND AND THE ISLAND 

I THE MAINLAND : PROVIDENCE WARWICK 

IN proceeding to relate the founding of the first 
four communities of Rhode Island, we come at 
length to what is distinctively Rhode Island his- 
tory upon Rhode Island soil. 

These communities fall naturally into two groups : 
one consisting of Providence (Mooshassuc) and 
Warwick (Shawomet), Mainland settlements ; and 
the other of Portsmouth (Pocasset) and Newport, 
settlements on the island of Aquidneck. The first 
group was founded by men — Roger Williams and 
Samuel Gorton — whose bent (modified somewhat 
by time and events) was in the direction of pro- 
nounced individualism. The second group, on the 
contrary, owed its existence to William Coddington 
and John Clarke, men of practical qualities and busi- 
ness experience, who from the start realized the need 
in community affairs of the strong hand of author- 
ity. And it is interesting to note how, all through 
the history of Rhode Island for over a hundred 
years — down, in fact, to 1742 — the two sets of 
influences, one the Providence set, and the other 
that of Aquidneck, contended against each other ; 

83 



84 Early Rhode Island 

the former, with respect to the world at large, mak- 
ing for separation and exclusiveness ; and the latter, 
for co-operation and general intercourse. Upon 
one point only were the two groups of communities 
in practical agreement (and even here, at first, the 
agreement while practical was not absolute), and 
that was that no one should be accounted a delin- 
quent merely for doctrine. But to our narrative. 

When Williams, after landing at the spring and 
building a wigwam for temporary shelter, climbed 
with some of his companions to the summit of the 
hill that rose nearly two hundred feet directly be- 
hind his habitation, the view that met his gaze has 
thus been described by Mr. Dorr^ : 

" The Great Salt River flowed far below broad and uncon- 
fined. On the east it was bordered by ancient forest trees, 
and on the west by deep marshes studded with islands over- 
grown with coarse grass, and nearly covered by every spring 
tide. At the head of the bay the channel widened into a cove, 
with a broad gravelly beach on the east and north, and a border 
of salt marshes on the west. It received on its northern side 
two small and sluggish rivers, each with its own environment 
of swamp and wood land. . . . Still farther westward, low 
sand hills scantily covered with pines rose above the marsh. 
Beyond these, unpromising ridges of rock and gravel stretched 
along the western horizon and shut in the view. On its 
western side, the hill upon which our explorers stood ascended 
abruptly from the very margin of the Salt River, but sloped 
with an easy descent to the Seekonk nearly a mile away on 
the east. Both its eastern and western hillsides were thickly 
wooded with ' eminent trees ' of oak and cedar. 

' Rider's Hist. Tract No. ij. 



The Mainland and the Island 85 

" Both declivities were well watered, but the rains of cen- 
turies had well-nigh washed away whatever fertilizing princi- 
ples the soil of the western hillside had once possessed, and it 
promised only a scanty return to the labors of the settlers. 
But when our eager observers turned their steps northward 
toward the streams which poured their turbid waters into the 
cove, and enjoyed their first view of the natural meadows 
[along these watercourses], and thence looked southward over 
the Pawtuxet valley, ready to be converted into corn lands and 
pastures, a sense of relief came over them as to the prospects 
of the new plantation." 

The further and closer inspection of subsequent 
days disclosed to the exiles " great beds of clams 
and oysters bordering the east side of the Salt 
River and cove," "ample supplies of pigeons and 
other wild birds," schools of bright-colored salmon 
ascending the river, and slender deer vanishing in 
the uplands. " Banishment from the society of 
Puritan elders and magistrates," remarks Mr. Dorr, 
"was not without its alleviations." 

The initial steps toward converting the Indian 
Mooshassuc into an English plantation, which were 
taken by Williams, were three in number : first, the 
securing from Canonicus and Miantonomi of a 
"gift" of the spot (the lands and meadows upon 
the two fresh rivers, Mooshassuc and Wanasqua- 
tucket), in accordance with the " treaties " or under- 
standings of the years 1634 and 1635 ; second, the 
providing for the spot of an English name. Provi- 
dence being selected because of the providential 
"vacancy" there existing, and "many other Provi- 
dences of the Most Holy and Only Wise"^; and 

' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 335. 



86 Early Rhode Island 

third, the purchase from the Narragansett sachems 
(on November lo, 1637) of the island of Prudence 
in the bay (a natural corral for goats and swine) to 
serve as a reliable source of food supply/ 

It, however, was not until March 24, 1638, that 
Williams procured a memorandum of conveyance 
from Canonicus and Miantonomi reducing their gift 
to tangible form. And, in view of the recipient's 
"many kindnesses and services" to the donors, the 
gift was now enlarged so as to embrace " all [the] 
land from [the Mooshassuc and Wanasquatucket] 
rivers to the Pawtuxet," and " the grass and 
meadows upon [the latter stream] " ; the original 
transfer passing into history as the " Providence 
purchase," and the one additional as the " Pawtuxet 
purchase."''^ Moreover, to render everything defi- 

• Cattle at first were a great rarity. James Brown, who was a grandson of 
Chad Brown, and who died in 1732 at the age of sixty-six years, says, in a 
document preserved among the Moses Brown Papers at the Rhode Island 
Historical Society, that in 1638 " one cow was sold for 22 pound in silver 
and gold, as I have been credibly informed." Chad Brown himself may 
have imparted this information, for he came to Providence in 1637. 

■■' The original deed is still in existence. It is kept (carefully protected) at 
the Providence City Hall. Facsimile reproductions may be found in C. W. 
Hopkins's Ho7ne Lots of the First Settlers (18S6) and in Rider's Hist. Tract 
No. 4., 2d Ser. The following is the language of the instrument : 

"At Nanhiggansick the 24th of the first month commonly called March, in 
the second year of our plantation or planting at Mooshausick or Providence. 
Memorandum, that we Caunaunicus and Meauntunomu, the two chief 
sachems of Nanhiggansick, having two years since sold unto Roger Williams, 
the lands and meadows upon the two fresh rivers, called Mooshausick and 
Wanasquatucket do now by these presents, establish and confirm the bounds 
of those lands, from the river and fields at Pawtucket, the great hill of Neo- 
taconkonitt on the northwest, and the town of Mashapauge on the west. 
As also in consideration of the many kindnesses and services he hath con- 
tinually done for us, both with our friends of Massachusetts as also at 
Quinitikticutt and Apaum or Plymouth, we do freely give unto him all that 
land from those rivers, reaching to Pawtuxet river, as also the grass and 



The Mainland and the Island 87 

nite, Miantonomi went personally with Williams 
over the entire tract, and pointed out the bounds 
and limitations/ As is well known, the Indian 
sachems were remarkably exact in matters of boun- 
dary, and whatever uncertainty may have arisen 
later on by reason of the very informal style of the 
memorandum, it is safe to assume that the Indians 
themselves knew precisely what lands they had 
parted with ; or, to put the statement as no doubt 
they would have put it, what lands they had per- 
mitted to be occupied. 

Meanwhile the new plantation had been growing 
in numbers, and, on October 8, 1638, Williams exe- 
cuted to twelve persons, including one of the origi- 

meadows upon the said Pawtuxet river. In witness whereof we have here- 
unto set our hands. 

" [The mark of Caunaunicus.j 
*' [The mark of Meauntunomu.J 
" In the presence of 

" [The mark of Soatash.] 

" [The mark of Assotemewit.] 

" 1639 Memorandum 3. mo 9th day. This was all again confirmed by 
Miantenomu, he acknowledged this his act and hand up the streams of Paw- 
tucket and Pawtuxet without limits, we might have for our use of cattle. 
Witness whereof 

" Roger Williams, 
" Benedict Arnold." 

The bounds of both the Providence and Pawtuxet " purchases," so far 
as they may be gathered from the deed, are indicated on the map at the be- 
ginning of this volume. In so far as these bounds have been a subject of 
controversy, they are considered at Chapter XIV. 

^ This at least is a fair inference from Williams's statement, in his letter 
of October 18, 1677, to the Commissioners of the United Colonies {Marr. 
Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 390), that " Miantonomi had set us our bounds here 
in his own person." It, however, is the statement of Stukeley Westcott, 
made March 20, 1659-60 : " We had not Boundes sett, whereupon we sent to 
the said Sachem [Miantonomi] to come and sett our Boundes, hee cominge 
there was some difference between ourselves, so that he went away and left 
the landes unbounded." — William Harris Papers (R, I, Hist. Soc. MSS.). 



88 Early Rhode Island 

nal settlers, William Harris, a conveyance, or rather 
memorandum of conveyance, of the lands named in 
the deed from the sachems.^ This deed to the 
twelve is of special historical interest, for, taken in 
connection with a letter written by Williams to John 
Winthrop in August or September, 1636,^ it dis- 
closes quite clearly the peculiar conditions under 
which the state of Rhode Island, at one of its 
points of germination, took its rise. The letter in 
question intimates that Williams was beginning to 
be " wearied " by those " desires " of William Harris 
(of which he makes explicit mention at a subse- 
quent time)^ to be admitted, along with others, 
"into fellowship of [his] purchase." It shows also 
that, to the end of furthering the double project of 
founding an Indian mission and an asylum for 
" persons distressed for conscience," he wished so 
far to predetermine the form of government for the 
plantation, that, while retaining upon general sub- 
jects but a single vote for himself, he might prevent 
his associates from admitting to membership per- 

' The twelve grantees were Stukeley Westcott, William Arnold, Thomas 
James, Robert Cole, John Greene, John Throckmorton, William Harris, 
William Carpenter, Thomas Olney, Francis Weston, Richard Waterman, 
Ezekiel Holliman. — P7-ov. Rec, vol. iii., p. 90. 

On December 20, 1661, Williams executed a deed confirming the con- 
veyance of October 8, 1638. In this he says that "in the year 1637, so 
called, I delivered the deed subscribed by the two aforesaid chief Sachems, 
so much thereof as concerneth the aforementioned lands from myself and 
my heirs unto the whole number of purchasers," etc. But that 1638, and 
not 1637, was the actual date is made evident by the circumstance that four 
of the purchasers alluded to by Williams (Westcott, Weston, Waterman, 
and Holliman) did not come to Providence till after March, 1638. 

' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 3. 

5 Rider's Hist. Tract No. 14, p. 55 ; i?. /. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. 
viii., p. 157. 



The Mainland and the Island 89 

sons of whom he could not approve. The letter 
queries : " Whether I may not lawfully desire this 
of my neighbors, that as I freely subject myself to 
common consent, and shall not bring in any person 
into the town without their consent, so also that 
against my consent no person be violently brought 
in and received." ""^ 

But what is merely shadowed forth in the letter 
is made distinctly apparent in the deed to the 
twelve. This instrument, although inartificially 
drawn, — far too inartifically to effect its object, — 
still enables us to perceive that the intention of 
the grantor was to make a conveyance in trust for 
public uses. The language of the deed in its 
granting clause is : " That I, R. W., do freely and 
fully pass, grant, and make over equal right and 
power of enjoying and disposing the same grounds 
and lands [purchased of Canonicus and Mianto- 
nomi, including those upon the Pawtuxet], unto 
my loving friends and neighbors [designating 
them by their initials], and such others as the ma- 
jor part of us shall admit into the same fellowship 
of vote with us." ^ Here, as Mr. Dorr points out, 
" the only succession described is a corporate suc- 
cession to a perpetual body continued in being by 
the vote of the entire fellowship, [a fellowship 
which could have] successors, but [could not have] 
heirs." Moreover, in all subsequent references to 
this deed by Williams, including that contained in 

■ The consideration of this deed was ^^30, each grantee contributing 30J., 
country pay. The deed is set out in full in Staples' "Annals of Providence," 
R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. v., p. 28, and in the Prov. Rec, vol. xv., p. 86. 



90 Early Rhode Island 

** the confirmation deed " executed by him and his 
wife on December 20, 1661, the claim is reas- 
serted that the conveyance was in trust for the 
" fellowship." 

Nor, I apprehend, can there be much doubt that 
the deed to the twelve — the "initial deed," as it is 
usually called — was understood according to its 
true import by William Harris. It did not admit 
him and his associates into the kind of "fellowship 
of [Williams's] purchase " that was desired, and 
for the securing of which Harris is said to have 
gone the length of " pretending religion." But 
the latter was shrewd and practical, and when he 
found that he could do no better, accepted the 
initial deed without particular exhibition of chagrin 
(which would have disclosed that his religious in- 
terest in Indians and exiles had been pretended), 
and bided his time under the resolve to obviate 
the informal instrument by setting against it (as he 
in fact did) the natural desire of the community for 
immediate and individual ownership and control.^ 

Thus was defeated in its inception Roger Wil- 

' It was the claim of William Harris in later years that Williams acted 
merely as agent in procuring the Indian grants (R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n.s., 
vol. i., p. 201 ; Rider's Hist. Tract No. 14, p. 53 ; Prov. Rec, vol. v. 
p. 304), but for this claim there is virtually no foundation. Harris, when 
Williams gave him " leave to come along in [hisj company," was undeni- 
ably " poor and destitute," and there is every reason to give credence to 
the words of Williams when he says : " It is not true that I was imployed 
by any, made covenant with any, was supplied by any, or desired any to 
come with me into these parts." The full extent of Williams's ageticy was 
no doubt comprised in the "promise," which he admits making to Harris, 
not to exclude him and his associates from participation, in some form, in 
whatever he might receive from the Indians. — Rider's Hist. Tract No. /^, 
pp. 53. 54. 



The Mainland and the Island 9 1 

liams's interesting experiment of a mission and 
an asylum under the corporate management of a 
plantation in the wilderness. As intimated, the 
defeat was due to the circumstance that the ex- 
periment contravened too strongly the human pas- 
sion of acquisitiveness. In the defeat, however, 
there was in no way involved the fate of the 
broader experiment of Freedom of Conscience, 
of which the mission and asylum project was but 
an attempted special application ; for, in the ab- 
sence of an established church and clergy, and of 
ecclesiastical property, the principle of Freedom of 
Conscience marches with acquisition rather than 
against it, — a statement sanctioned to the full by 
Mr. Dorr in the remark that " solvency has at 
all times held the same place in Rhode Island 
which Puritan orthodoxy once occupied in Massa- 
chusetts." 

But the deed having been accepted by the twelve, 
the next thingr to be done was to make under it an 
assignment of lands from the Providence purchase, 
upon which the grantees (weary with sojourning in 
wigwams), and such others as meanwhile had been 
admitted into their fellowship, — fifty-four in all, — 
might build comfortable homes and plant corn. 
The parcels for dwellings were each five acres in 
extent and were assigned apart from those for 
planting. They were arranged on a thoroughfare 
or " towne streete" that extended for two miles 
along the east side of the Great Salt River. The 
two sets of parcels (the set for planting comprising 
parcels of six acres each) were assigned at one 



g2 Early Rhode Island 

time and probably by lot, but Williams was per- 
haps accorded a choice before the drawing began. 
Later on, when the matter had been fully deter- 
mined, the landed rights of a full proprietor at 
Providence embraced, we are told, a " home lot," a 
"six acre lot," and a right to a sufficient amount 
of the general land to make up one hundred 
acres. 

" The houses upon the * towne streete ' during the 
first generation," says Mr. Dorr, "were set upon 
stone foundations, and roughly but solidly framed 
with oak timbers hewn with the axe." They were 
of a story or a story and a half in height, and at 
one end was a huge stone chimney. 

" In the earliest days the houses had but two rooms, called 
in the probate documents the 'lower room' and the 'chamber.' 
The space did not always permit the luxury of stairs, and the 
only ascent to the chamber was often by a ladder. These 
humble dwellings were nearly universal until the last decade 
of the seventeenth century. ... In such a house lived John 
Smith the miller and town clerk. A few houses had two 
rooms upon the floor, sometimes called in the inventories the 
'inner 'and the 'outer' rooms. Thomas Olney Sr. had a 
'parlour,' 'kitchen,' and 'chamber.' Williams had at times 
more money than his associates, and his house was very prob- 
ably the largest of his day." 

Each home lot extended eastward from the town 
street in the form of a long parallelogram, and 
immediately in rear of the dwelling were the barn 
and other outbuildingrs. Behind these there was an 
orchard, and at the foot of the orchard the family 
burying-ground, where, " when the controversies of 
the town street were ended, the disputants were 



The Mainland and the Island 93 

laid to rest by their surviving opponents in the 
quiet of their homes in the wilderness." 

If the first dwellings were heavy and rude, so 
were the furnishings. 

" Solid chests and tables stood upon the sanded floors. Chairs 
were but an infrequent luxury." "As a substitute, the old Eng- 
lish settle stood at the family table, by the winter fireside, and 
before the door during the summer evenings. The settlers 
were at first not richer in culinary utensils. The ancient iron 
pot was then their sole representative, and doubtless performed 
many functions. Their tables, like those of the English yeo- 
men of the period, had no display of linen. The wooden 
trencher, with a few articles of earthen-ware or *puter,' served 
all the purposes of refreshment or hospitality." 

No inventory " has any mention of the silver plate, 
or carved oak furniture, such as many of the 
planters of Massachusetts brought with them." 
William Harris — as one would expect from the 
general forehandedness of the man — was able to 
make the most creditable display of personal be- 
longings. " His voluminous inventory," says Mr. 
Dorr, " shows every kind of rural comfort. Besides 
two chairs, a frying pan, platters, dishes and spoons, 
and a press for * syder,' he alone of that generation 
had a warming-pan for the comfort of his old age." 

The origin and development of civil institutions 
in Providence forms the most suggestive topic in 
the history of the community. The political con- 
ditions were unique. The settlement was upon 
English soil, but so remote from England as to be 
practically independent. It was also independent 



94 Early Rhode Island 

of the other colonies. There was no lord pro- 
prietor, and any proprietary authority that might 
have been exercised by Williams, in virtue of his 
Indian title, he chose to resign. As Professor 
George E. Wilson observes, " Whatever form of 
government was to be established must come from 
within." The form which, coming " from within," 
was established reflected quite accurately the feel- 
ing of the inhabitants, which may not inaptly be 
said to have been that there should be neither 
magistracy nor church, and that the two should be 
kept entirely separate. One step, however, as a 
body politic the inhabitants seem to have been 
sufificiently sure of themselves to take at the outset, 
and that was, according to Winthrop, to "make an 
order that no man should be molested for his 
conscience." Otherwise than as recog^nized in 
this order, " the face of magistracy " (to quote 
Williams's own words in the letter of August or 
September, 1636) "[did] not suit with [their] con- 
dition." Williams says further in this letter: 
" Hitherto the masters of families have ordinarily 
met once a fortnight and consulted about our com- 
mon peace, watch, and planting ; and [by] mutual 
consent have finished all matters with speed and 
peace." 

But the plan of government by " mutual con- 
sent," — that is, of government in the full sense 
by consent of the governed, — was already, after 
some few months' trial, beginning to prove insuf- 
ficient. Williams adds that "of late some young 
men, single persons (of whom we had much need), 



The Mainland and the Island 95 

being admitted to freedom of inhabitation and 
promising to be subject to the orders made by the 
consent of the householders, are discontented with 
their estate, and seek the freedom of vote also 
and equality, etc.," and that, "beside," the settle- 
ment is in danger '* in the midst of these dens of 
lions," referring to the Indians ; whence he draws 
the conclusion that there is a demand " to be com- 
pact in a civil way and power." He therefore 
submits for the criticism of Winthrop, his corre- 
spondent, a form of compact which, although never 
formally adopted, was acted upon, and may be 
regarded as the first written constitution of the 
settlement. It is as follows : 

" We, whose names are hereunder written, late inhabitants 
of the Massachusetts (upon occasion of some difference of 
conscience) being permitted [!] to depart from the limits of 
that Patent under which we came over into these parts, and 
being cast by the God of Heaven remote from others of our 
countrymen amongst the barbarians in this town of New 
Providence, do with free and joint consent promise each unto 
other that, for our common peace and welfare (until we hear 
further of the King's royal pleasure concerning ourselves), we 
will from time to time subject ourselves, in active or passive 
obedience, to such orders and agreements as shall be made by 
the greater number of the present householders, and such as 
shall hereafter be admitted by their consent into the same 
privilege and covenant in our ordinary meeting.'" 

Soon after the plan of government by majority 
of householders had gone into effect, another sug- 
gestion which Williams had submitted in his 
Winthrop letter was not only put into effect, but 
formally adopted. This had reference to those 



96 Early Rhode Island 

" young men, single persons of whom [the settle- 
ment] had much need," and stands as follows upon 
the town records : 

" We, whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the 
town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves, in active 
or passive obedience, to all such orders or agreements as shall 
be made for public good of the body, in an orderly way, by 
themajor assent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, 
incorporated together into a town fellowship, and such others 
whom they shall admit unto them, only in civil things." ' 

It should, however, be remarked that in Williams's 
draught of the above, the words " only in civil 
things" were lacking, nor is it known to whom 
their insertion is to be attributed. The point in 
any event is of no great importance ; for whether 
these words were added upon the advice of the 
founder of Providence, or upon that of some one 
of his associates, they clearly expressed both the 
individual views of the former and the policy which 
the community had prescribed for itself from the 
beginning. 

The new regime inaugurated by Williams — that 
of government by majority of householders — was 
one of democracy, in the sense that under it there 
was (as in the Democracies of antiquity) equality 

' This compact was probably of date August 20, 1637. At all events, 
such was the date according to a transcript of the original date-page 
(now missing) made in 1800. Moreover, Daniel Abbot, some years after 
1637, mentions the date in question as that upon which Providence "be- 
came a towne incorporated " {Prov. Rec, 4th Rep., p. 11). The subscribers 
to the compact were Richard Scott, William Reynolds, John Field, Chad 
Brown, John Warner, George Rickard, Edward Cope, Thomas Angell, 
Thomas Harris, Francis Wickes, Benedict Arnold, John Winsor, William 
Wickenden. — Prov. Rec, vol. i., p. i. 



The Mainland and the Island 97 

among the ruling class. It was not democratic 
in the inclusive sense of later times, but this is not 
to be wondered at. There was about it one note- 
worthy feature, which was that it was practically 
unprovided with organs of function ; its habit, like 
that of certain marine animals, was to improvise 
out of its own substance whatever organ occasion 
required, and then, as quickly as possible, to merge 
the organ again within itself. The cause for this 
was jealousy of delegated power, — such power as 
the settlers had both seen, and been made to feel 
the smarting effect of, in Massachusetts. For 
example, the town records kept during the first 
years of the plantation — that is, down to 1640 — 
reveal the existence of only two public officers, a 
treasurer chosen monthly, and a clerk chosen at 
each town meeting. There were no courts nor 
magistrates, and no executive officers ; there was 
not even that historic functionary a constable. 

With the year 1640, politics at Providence took 
on a new phase. The unorganic in government 
was compelled to give place to the organic, — a low 
form of the organic, it is true, but organic to a 
certain extent none the less. Sometime prior to 
August 27th, the town named a committee of four 
(among whom were Chad Brown and William 
Harris) with power to establish a true line of di- 
vision between "the general common of our town 
of Providence," and " the particular properties which 
some of our neighbors have in Pawtuxet," and in 
addition to formulate a system of arbitration for 
the community. On August 27th this committee 



98 Early Rhode Island 

made its report, which/ aside from determining 
the division line mentioned above, embodied the 
following conclusions : (i) That five men be ap- 
pointed "to be betrusted with disposal of lands, and 
also of the town's stock and all general things " ; 
also to act as a board of naturalization for strangfers, 
receiving into fellowship such applicants only as, 
after six days notice, are not found open to objec- 
tion.^ (2) That " as formerly hath been, . . . 
so still to hold forth liberty of conscience." (3) 
That it is apprehended that there is " no way so 
suitable to our condition as government by way 
of arbitration," and that in cases of dispute, if 
arbitration be not voluntarily resorted to, the five 
" disposers " may compel it by choosing two arbi- 
trators for each disputant, whose decision shall be 
enforced by the disposers.^ (4) That the dispo- 
sers shall call delinquents "to answer by arbitra- 
tion " upon the complaint of the injured party, 
but if the latter make no complaint, then upon 

' Staples' "Annals of Providence," R, I. Hist. Coll., vol. v., p. 40, and 
Prov. Rec, vol. xv., p. 2. 

"The rule upon this point originally adopted (August 13, 1636) was, that 
" any man to be receaved as an Inhabitant" must apply in season for the 
"month day," but that, in cases of special urgency, " foure dayes warning " 
would be sufficient. — Prov. Rec., vol. i., p. 2. 

^ If the four arbitrators (or a majority of them) could not agree, then the 
disposers were to name three substituted arbitrators, and their decision, or 
that of a majority of them, was to be final. Where a decision was reached 
by the four, the " faultive" was to pay the arbitrators for their time ; and 
where a decision was reached only by the intervention of the three, the 
" faultive not agreeing in the first [arbitration was] to pay the charge of the 
last." But if, in the opinion of the three, the failure to reach a decision in 
the first arbitration were due to captious demands made against an offender 
who offered reasonable accommodation, then the three were to assess the 
costs of the final arbitration to the party truly in fault. 



The Mainland and the Island 99 

the complaint of any person. (5) That hue and 
cry be raised against any dehnquent seeking to 
escape, but that " if any man raise a hubbub, and 
there be no just cause, then for the party that 
raised the hubbub to satisfy men for their time lost 
in it. " (6) That in case of a difference on the part 
of any person with any of the disposers, "which 
cannot be deferred till general meeting of the town, 
he may have the clerk call the town together." (7) 
That "the town by five men shall give every man a 
deed of all his lands lying within the bounds of the 
plantation to hold it by for after ages." (8) That 
" the five disposers shall, from the date hereof, 
meet every month day upon general things, and at 
the quarter day to a new choice, and give up their 
old accounts." (9, 10, 11, and 12) That the clerk 
shall call together the disposers " at the month day,'* 
and "the general town every quarter," etc. 

The foregoing report bears, in addition to the 
signatures of the committee by whom it was pre- 
pared, those of thirty-five of the householders of 
Providence, Roofer Williams's sio-nature being; with 
the others. How little was gained in organic 
effectiveness by the substitution of the plan of 
government by arbitration for that of government 
by majority of householders becomes apparent in 
the fact that the only executive power provided 
under the plan first mentioned was that of " the 
whole inhabitants " brought into activity by the 
"hubbub" or hue and cry; — there was still no 
constable. Thus the Providence body politic — a 
low and ixqperfect organism, its vital currents 



lOO Early Rhode Island 

baulked in their courses — maintained a weak and 
miserable existence for several years. Two cases 
in particular — the case of Joshua Verin, and that 
of Samuel Gorton and the proprietors of Provi- 
dence and Pawtuxet — will serve to illustrate the 
times. 

The Verin case is one among a number in the 
history of Rhode Island which raise the question, 
how far Roger Williams and his community were 
consistent in their application of the principle of 
Freedom of Conscience. Joshua Verin was "a 
young man, boisterous and desperate," who, re~ 
fusinof " to hear the word," for which he was not 
molested, set to beating his wife, " a gracious and 
modest woman," "because he could not draw [her] 
to the same ungodliness with him[self]." ^ In 
other words, Verin forcibly restrained his wife from 
attending upon the religious exercises which Wil- 
liams was in the habit of holding in his own house, 
and as a sequel was, on June 21, 1637, "withheld 
the liberty of voting for breach of covenant in 
restraining liberty of conscience." The brutality 
with which this " boisterous and desperate " young 
man treated his wife would of itself have been 
ample justification for his " being withheld the 
liberty of voting," but apparently for the purpose 
of making a test on the conscience question — 
a question involving the foundations of their com- 
munity — the people of Providence chose to go 

' Letter of Roger Williams to John Winthrop, May 22, 1638, Nary. 
Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 95, q6. 



The Mainland and the Island loi 

behind the culprit's conduct to his motive, and 
punish him for that. 

The culprit, however, has not lacked defenders. 
Mr. Dorr quietly suggests that as the house of the 
Verins was next to that of Williams on the north, 
Mistress Verin was probably led to neglect the 
family dinner in order that she might attend the 
prophesyings of the arch-exile, — hinc ill(2 lacrymcB. 
But the most ingenious defence is that by William 
(or Benedict) Arnold, one of the " first comers " to 
Providence. He, as related by Winthrop, stood up 
in the town meeting and, referring to the rule about 
liberty of conscience, said that "when he consented 
to that order he never intended it should extend to 
the breach of any ordinance of God, such as the 
subjection of wives to their husbands " ; and that 
Verin, having this ordinance before him, evidently 
had done what he did " out of conscience" ; where- 
fore to censure him would be to act contrary to 
their own rule, which was that " no man should be 
censured for his conscience." The point here made 
by Arnold was not meant to be seriously taken, 
for, as Winthrop tells us, he was " a witty man," 
but it was nevertheless a point that the people of 
Rhode Island had to meet more than once. Venn's 
case was easy of solution, but others arose in which 
the line between acts tolerable because dictated by 
conscience, and acts intolerable whether dictated 
by conscience or not, was extremely hard to trace. 

The further case mentioned as illustrative of 
the times — that of Gorton and the proprietors of 



I02 Early Rhode Island 

Providence and Pawtuxet — was one of far-reaching 
consequences, and may be but briefly touched upon 
in the present chapter. 

Almost contemporaneously with the execution 
by Williams of the initial deed,- — that is, shortly 
after October 8, 1638, — Harris, still pretending 
religion, and, together with his co-grantees, par- 
ticularly Thomas Olney, Sr., confessing himself 
(orally) a mere " feoffee " or trustee for public 
ends,^ pressed his chief to an arbitration respect- 
ing the as yet unassigned lands upon the Paw- 
tuxet ; whence it resulted that these lands (in a 
sense only less ambiguous than that attaching with 
respect to the Providence purchase) were assigned^ 

' Rider's Hist. Tract No. i^, p. 56; R. I. Hist. Soc, Pub., n. s., vol. 
viii., p. 157. 

- The assignment was made under an agreement dated the 8th of the 8th 
month, 1638 (but, as stated in the text, probably executed shortly after this 
date), which provided that "all the Meddow ground at Patuxett bounding 
upon the fresh River on both sides is to be impropriated unto those 13 per- 
sons being now incorporated together in our Towne of providence . 
and to be equally divided among them and every man to pay an equall pro- 
portion to raise up the sum of 20 £ for the same, and if it shall come to 
passe that some or any one of these thirteene persons abovesaiddoe not pay 
or give sattisfaction of his or their equall proportions ... by this day 
eight weekes which will be the seventh day of the loth moneth next ensue- 
ing [eight weeks from October Sth would have been December 3d, not 
December 7th] that they or he shall Leave theire or his proportion of med- 
dow ground unto the rest of those 13 persons to be at their disposing who 
shall make up the whole sume of Twentye pounds which is to be paide unto 
Roger Williams." — Prov. Rec, vol. xv., p. 31. 

On December 3, 1638, Williams endorsed the above instrument with his 
receipt for ;^iS lis. 3</. In its nature, therefore, this agreement was a sub- 
stitute for so much of the initial deed as affected Pawtuxet; for, whereas 
the initial deed conveyed Pawtuxet, as well as Providence, in trust for the 
fellowship (including members subsequently to be admitted), the agreement 
conveyed Pawtuxet free of any trust. And the substitute was valid, for it 
was assented to by all the parties in interest. Williams, however, evidently 
supposed, as shown by his description of the Pawtuxet men as " feoffees," 



The Mainland and the Island 103 

in severalty to " the monopolizing twelve." And 
not only so, but the following year (1639),^ in June, 
some one (certainly not Roger Williams, probably 
Harris) contrived to have entered upon the orig- 
inal deed from the sachems a clause (purporting 
to be by Miantonomi, although not signed by him) 
confirming the Providence and Pawtuxet grants, 
and granting further, " up the streams of Pawtucket 
etc. without limits . . . for our use of cattle," — 
a clause so loose, large, and vague as to be charged 
with possibilities wholly unforeseen by Miantonomi, 
or Williams, or any one else, unless it were the 
procurer of it, William Harris.^ 

Doubly fortified, therefore, in their ownership of 
Pawtuxet, the twelve promptly went into posses- 
sion. Harris, together with William Arnold, Wil- 
liam Carpenter, and Zachariah Rhodes, moved 

that the latter considered themselves bound to subserve "public ends" in 
their Pawtuxet, as well as in their Providence holdings. 

' Mr. S. S. Rider has shown (/i^zV^. Tract. No. 4, 2d Sen, pp. 21, 22) that the 
date 1639 is not upon the original deed, and upon this fact, with other con- 
siderations, bases an inference (discussed at Chapter XIV.) that the deed 
has been seriously tampered with. I am, however, inclined to think, with 
Mr. George T. Paine, that " the date was probably added by some one who 
knew the proper year to be 1639 "; and that, "as it was on the copies held 
'by the town or by some neighbors of the town,' it was thus entered upon 
the records." — A Denial of the Charges of Forgery, etc., pp. 56, 57. 

''■ Staples, in his Annals of Prov., p. 27, states that the clause in question 
is in the handwriting of Thomas James. The following from William 
Harris's plea to the Court of Commissioners, November 17, 1677, would 
seem to confirm the statement: "And tho we do not need the last clause 
in our grant . . , yet for the reputation of right Credit of the case of the 
grantors grant, grantees. Witnesses, and Clark or Scribner (who was a Man 
of Learning and Wisdom One Mr. Thomas yatnes. Once paster of the Church 
at Charlestown) I will therefore prove the said clause a good Grant." — R. I. 
Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. i., p. 210. For Williams's denial of having in- 
spired or draughted the clause, see Narr, Chib Pub., vol. vi., p. 390. 



I04 Early Rhode Island 

thither late in 1641 or early in 1642. The quiet 
of their existence in this retreat, however, was des- 
tined soon to be disturbed. 

It was a period of rising fermentation both in 
Old England and in New. The questions agi- 
tated were chiefly religious, and the agitation was 
greatest among the humble classes. It was a time 
of Tom, Dick, and Harry turned preacher, — such 
as Barebone the leather seller of Fleet Street, 
Hobson the Buckinghamshire tailor, Kiffin the 
brewer's servant, and Oates the weaver. It was 
likewise a time of women preachers — prototypes 
and antitypes of Anne Hutchinson — as, for in- 
stance, Mrs. Attaway, to whom Baillie alludes as 
" the mistress of all the she-preachers of Coleman 
Street," and Mrs. Chidley, the clear-headed Toler- 
ationist and critic of the Massachusetts Puritans, 
but whom the Rev. Thomas Edwards spitefully 
characterizes as " a brazen - faced, audacious old 
woman." And the things preached were no less 
remarkable than the preachers, to wit : by the sect 
called Familists,^ that " all the resurrection and 

' The Familists, or Family of Love, were a sixteenth century sect, founded 
by Henry Niklaes, of Munster, Westphalia. Niklaes (born January 8, 
or lo, 1 501 or 1502) removed in early life to the Netherlands, and there, 
at Amsterdam, about 1540, assumed the role of a prophet and reformer. 
From the Netherlands the opinions of the new prophet spread to England, 
finding a lodgment in London and the eastern counties. Indeed, as early 
as 1552 Archbishop Cranmer makes mention of the Familists as " a new 
sect newly sprung up in Kent." In 1575, the sect laid a confession of their 
faith before Parliament and prayed for a Toleration. So far from securing 
this they were denounced as secret promoters of immorality, and became in 
the minds of all a menace and a bugbear. Their morals in fact were quite 
above reproach, but, as late as 1638, had not outgrown an evil fame, for in 



The Mainland and the Island 105 

glory which Scripture promises is past already " ; 
by the sect called Chiliasts, that there is to be " a 
temporal kingdom of Christ that must begin pres- 
ently and last one thousand years " ; by the Anti- 
Sabbatarians, that there is no obligatory Lord's Day 
or Sabbath ; and by the Soul-Sleepers or Mortalists, 
that "the present going of the Soule into Heaven 
or Hell is a meer fiction," that — 

" The hell-hatched doctrine of th' immortal soul 
Discovered, makes the hungry Furies howl 
And teare their snakey haire, with grief appaled 
To see their error-leading doctrine quailed, 
Hell undermined, and Purgatory blown up in the air." 

From the sects holding these doctrines, and from 
other sects, such as the Anabaptists and the Anti- 
nomians, there was at first a considerable filtration 
out of England into Massachusetts. But the 
frowning reception accorded to religious novelties 
by the Puritans was the means of diverting the 
stream of prophets and prophetesses, of inspired 
tanners and tailors and tapsters, so far as Massa- 
chusetts was concerned, and pouring it into Provi- 
dence and Aquidneck. No sooner was the religious 
enthusiast (unconscious instrument of the time- 
spirit of Toleration ^ ) arrived in Boston or Salem, 
than he was made aware of two things : first, that 
there was less chance for him to practise his trade 

that year John Cotton, in censuring Anne Hutchinson before the Boston 
Church, charged her with using arguments which the ' 'Anabaptists and Fami-f i 
lists bringe to prove the lawfullness of the common use of all women," 

' "All the sects, less or more, were Tolerationists ; the heresy of heresies 
in which they all agreed . , . was Liberty of Conscience." — Masson's 
Milton, vol. iii., p. 159. 



io6 Early Rhode Island 

of promoter of heresies there than in England ; and 
second, that in the Narragansett settlements, — 
where they denied all churches, and were even said 
to deny all magistracy, — he might practise it with 
impunity. So thither he went, with the result that, 
according to Cotton Mather, there never was held 
such a variety of religions together on so small a 
spot of ground. 

With the situation in Providence, in a religious 
respect, substantially as above set forth, Samuel 
Gorton (probably in March or April, 1641) came 
to the new plantation. In one place Gorton de- 
scribes himself as "a citizen of London, clothier" ; 
in another, as " a professor of the mysteries of 
Christ"; in still another, as "Samuel Gorton, De 
Primo ' ; and each description may be deemed 
fitting. Born in 1592 in the parish of Gorton, 
near the present city of Manchester, he was one of 
the army of irregular preachers — pioneers of Tol- 
eration, so to speak — who at this time, as we have 
seen, were beginning to set England in a turmoil. 

He had landed in Boston, in March, 1637, during 
the prosecution of Wheelwright, and believing in 
" liberty of conscience in respect to faith towards 
God " had soon removed to Plymouth. From 
Plymouth he had been banished by an order of 
court, made December 4, 1638, for contempt to- 
ward the magistrates in defending his family ser- 
vant, Ellen Aldridofe, against the charo^e of " smilingf 
in church" and making "some unworthy speeches 
and carriages"; and from Plymouth, "in snow up 
to the knee," he had betaken himself to Ports- 



The Mainland and the Island 107 

mouth on the island of Aquidneck. At Portsmouth, 
in the summer of 1640, he had again fallen into 
difficulty (the details of which will be noticed far- 
ther along), and had either been condemned to 
wear a chain upon his leg or to be whipped. It was 
with these questionable antecedents that he arrived 
in Providence ; where, being arrived, he was refused 
admission even as an inhabitant. The feeling was 
that his course stood in need at least of explanation, 

— for apparently he had been a wanton disturber 
of the civil peace, — and in this feeling the reader 
will no doubt share. 

Gorton's remarkable series of misadventures 
would seem fairly to be explicable in the light of 
three considerations : first, that he was by nature 
an agitator and vituperative, after the manner of 
agitators of his time, — particularly after the man- 
ner of the tanner, tailor, and tapster class of agita- 
tors, to which, despite some points of superiority, 
he essentially belonged ; second, that he regarded 
himself as the founder of a new relisfious sect alone 
knowing Truth, and, after the manner of such 
founders, felt a good deal of honest contempt for 
those who were still in the outer darkness of igno- 
rance ; and third, that he was a staunch constitu- 
tionalist, utterly despising and repudiating the 
claims and pretensions of all governments that did 
not derive their authority from legitimate sources, 

— that is, in the case of the English colonies, 
from a royal patent ^ ; or that, possessing authority 

' His contemptuous language to the Plymouth magistrates (in the course of 
which he had said, " If Satan , . . will accuse the brethren, let him come 



io8 Early Rhode Island 

legitimately derived, did not exercise it in accord- 
ance with the common law of England. 

During his stay at Plymouth and Portsmouth, 
Gorton had evidently made converts to his new re- 
ligion, for associated with him at the time of his 
condemnation were John Wickes, Randall Holden, 
Richard Carder, Sampson Shotton, and Robert Pot- 
ter. These now came in his train to Providence, 
and here the society was quickly enlarged by the 
addition of John Warner, Richard Waterman,- 
William Wodell, John Greene, Nicholas Power, 
and Francis Weston. Just what form of belief 
Gorton's religious society held, it is indeed difficult 
to say. Mr. Lewis G. Janes, in a late and inter- 
esting study of the question, argues that Samuel 
Gorton was "the premature John the Baptist of 
New England Transcendentalism," — the spiritual 
father of Channing, Theodore Parker, and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson.^ But it will be the conclusion, 

down from Jehoshua's seat [the seat of judgment] and stand here [indicat- 
ing the prosecutor's place])," was provoked by the fact that the colony, in 
the case of Ellen Aldridge, his servant, was proceeding inquisitorially from 
the bench, and not accusatorially through some prosecutor, as was required 
under the English law. And at Portsmouth — where he undoubtedly bade 
the community defiance in a style truly Gortonian — the trouble was that 
to his mind those attempting to call him to account (being organized under 
no royal patent) were mere private persons, mere squatters upon the public 
domain, possessing no greater rights over him than he possessed over them. 

In the latter contention, Gorton, it may be remarked, showed little 
comprehension of that English common law to which he so confidently ap- 
pealed. " Englishmen," as Mr. Abner C. Goodell, Jr has well said {Proc. 
Mass. Hist. Soc. vol. v., p. 327), ..." carry with them the common 
law wherever they go." Whence "it follows that people . . . situated 
as were the settlers of Providence and Portsmouth may lawfully constitute 
a proper forum for deciding disputes and for ascertaining guilt, and may a]i- 
point agents for executing judgment." 

' Mr. Janes (Chapter VIII.) discovers in Gorton's writings — particularly 



The Mainland and the Island 109 

I am persuaded, of most of those who make any 
attempt to understand the Professor of the Mys- 
teries of Christ, that, as already intimated, he prob- 
ably derives his whole importance in American 
history from the simple fact that he was the most 
strenuous, the most irrepressible, of all the New 
England dissenters from Massachusetts Puritanism, 
— in other words, the most stentorian-voiced of all 
the New England heralds of Toleration. And in 
subserving this end, it of course mattered not 
whether his lucubrations in theology were com- 
prehended, or comprehensible, even by himself. 

Be that, however, as it may, Gorton on his ad- 
vent to Providence found numerous sects, or rather 
f ragmen ;.s of sects, but none sufficiently well de- 
fined to invite attack, unless perhaps the Baptists 
and Seekers. Roger Williams, — probably in the 
spring of 1638, — had formed the Baptist Society,^ 

in the Commentary on the Lord's Prayer preserved in manuscript in the 
Rhode Island Historical Society's Collection — the following fundamentals 
of belief : (i) The Infinite and Absolute \s per se unknowable. (2) Christ, 
however, is the manifestation of the unknowable. (3) The death of Christ 
was merely symbolical — a single prerogative instance — of the death of the 
Son of God. (4) Man is called upon to seek communion with the divine in 
Christ directly, and not through church forms and observances. (5) The 
God-head is one, not three. (6) Immortality is, in the ordinary sense, 
figurative ; righteousness is life eternal ; sin is eternal death. Heaven is a 
condition of the soul ; the soul is even now in eternity. 

' The members of the society were in all probability the persons men- 
tioned by Hugh Peters as having been excommunicated by the church at 
Salem, and as having with two exceptions been " rebaptized." These were 
Roger Williams and his wife, John Throckmorton and his wife, Thomas 
Olney and his wife, Stukeley Westcott and his wife, Mary Holliman, and 
widow Reeves (Letter of Hugh Peters, Hutchinson's ilfaj'j'., vol. i., p. 421). 
To the ten named by Peters, the Rev. .Samuel Caldwell (Anniversary Ser- 
mon, 1889, pp. 37, 38) would add Ezekiel Holliman, Robert Scott and his 
wife, Chad Brown, Gregory Dexter, and William Wickenden. Indeed as 



I lo Early Rhode Island 

but in the meanwhile had himself become a Seeker.* 
He and Gorton, therefore, confronted each other 
at this time in the interesting and dual attitude 
of representatives of the time-spirit of Tolera- 
tion, and of rival religious sects. But Gorton did 
not seriously assail the Baptists, or the Seekers, 
or Williams, in any way of theology. It was 
not necessary. He merely let it be known by 
a general fulmination or two that a new religion 
had come to town, and disciples flocked around 
him. Indeed in Providence a new religion (while 
it was new) was as welcome as in ancient days 
was a new philosophy in Athens. The result was 
that Roger Williams was speedily denuded of much 
of his following, — left standing practically alone, 
in fact, in the bleakness of his Seekerism ; a situa- 
tion by no means unprecedented in the career of 
the arch-separatist, but which he nevertheless did 
not like, declaring, anent Gorton, that he had in 
Christ's name withstood him ; a situation, more- 
over, of which John Cotton was not slow to take 
advantage, taunting Williams with having been 

regards the Scotts, it is the statement of Winthrop that it was by Mrs. 
Scott, who was Anne Hutchinson's sister, that Williams was "emboldened 
to make open profession of Anabaptism." 

' Richard Scott thus describes Williams's conversion to Seekerism in a let- 
ter quoted in George Fox's New England Fire Brand ^«f»(r/if(/ (appendix), 
" I walked with him in the Baptist way about 3 or 4 months. ... In 
which time he broke off from his society and declared at large the Ground 
and Reasons of it : That their baptism could not be right because it was 
not administered by an apostle. After that he set upon a way of seeking 
(with two or three of them that had deserted with him) by way of preach- 
ing and Praying ; and there he continued a year or two till two of the 
three left him." The connection of Williams with the Seekers will be 
considered at Chapter VI. 



The Mainland and the Island 



III 



superseded with the rabble by " a more prodigious 
minter of exorbitant novelties " than himself.^ 

While Gorton, guided by the instinct of the agi- 
tator looking for trouble, thus passed by the vari- 
ous Providence religious societies and individual 
religionists as unworthy more than casual atten- 
tion, he pounced with avidity upon William Harris, 
Thomas Olney, and their co-proprietors of the 
Providence and Pawtuxet purchases. 

It will be remembered that Williams, in his let- 
ter to Winthrop, written in 1636, spoke of cer- 
tain "young men, single persons," who had been 
admitted "to freedom of inhabitation," but who 
were "discontented with their estate," and sought 
" the freedom of vote also, and equality." In 
the course of five years these same young men 
— the "second comers" to the plantation — to- 
gether with the later recruits of their order, had 
become still more discontented. They had seen 
Harris and his associates each fitted out with his 
hundred acres from the Providence purchase, and 
each again with a large estate on the Pawtuxet, and 
they wanted something for themselves, the privi- 
lege of voting at least. They could not effectively 

' It would seem that in discarding all theologies, and in becoming a 
humble seeker after truth, — in prostrating himself utterly 
" Upon the great world's altar stairs 
That slope thro' darkness," — 
Roger Williams came as near as his age would permit, in the case of a soul 
at once supremely honest and truly devout, to being an Agnostic. " It is 
interesting to know," says Mr. Edward Eggleston, "that Williams, the 
most romantic figure of the whole Puritan movement, at last found a sort 
of relief from the austere externalism and ceaseless dogmatism of his age 
by travelling the road of literalism until he had passed out on the other side 
into the region of devout and contented uncertainty." 



1 1 2 Early Rhode Island 

dispute the naked right of the Harris-Olney party 
to keep them from sharing in the good things at 
hand, for they had all signed a stipulation subject- 
ing themselves, in active or passive obedience, to 
this party. Gorton, however, was in no such predica- 
ment ; he had signed nothing ; had indeed not been 
permitted to sign anything. He was free, there- 
fore, in the interest of the newcomers in general, 
to avail himself of the thesis (already propounded 
in the case of Portsmouth) that the whole Provi- 
dence landed oligarchy, with its ridiculous system 
of government by arbitration, was nothing more 
nor less than a high-handed encroachment upon the 
public domain, and a usurpation upon the common 
law, both of which abuses he, as public functionary 
in ordinary, was called upon to redress. 

An opportunity soon presented itself. Some- 
time in October or November, 1641, a board of 
arbitrators in Providence found a claim against 
Francis Weston (lately turned Gortonist), in the 
amount of fifteen pounds, which was to be satisfied 
in cash or by cattle and commodities. When, in 
default of any tender of satisfaction, the community 
sought, on November 15th, to attach a portion of 
Weston's cattle, Samuel Gorton, with divers of his 
company, assailed the representatives of law and 
order in the street, making *' a tumultuous hubbub," 
in the course of which "some drops of blood were 
shed on either side." 

In thus resisting the established powers at Provi- 
dence, Gorton no doubt felt that he was serving 
the cause of abstract justice as involved in the 



The Mainland and the Island 113 

struesfle between the landless and otherwise indi- 
gent non-voting freemen, and the landed and well- 
to-do voting proprietors ; but he felt even more, 
perhaps, that he was at length clearly demonstrat- 
ing that thesis which he had unhappily failed to 
demonstrate very clearly at Portsmouth, namely, 
that no mere squatter, or body of squatters, upon 
the public domain possessed any legal rights against 
any other squatter individual or body. And this 
feeling was well founded, for, so clearly was his 
thesis demonstrated in the case of Providence, that 
even his adversaries were convinced of its sound- 
ness, and, on the 17th of November, 1641, to the 
number of thirteen persons, including William 
Harris and Benedict Arnold (but not including 
Roger Williams), formally petitioned Massachu- 
setts, out of " gentle courtesy, and for the preser- 
vation of humanity and mankind, ... to lend 
a neighborlike helping hand " to ease the com- 
munity of the burthen of Gorton. 

But the wary and (in practical affairs) far-seeing 
Bay Government did not lend the aid desired. 
" We merely told [the petitioners]," says Win- 
throp, " that except they did subject themselves to 
some jurisdiction, either Plymouth or ours, we had 
no calling or warrant to interfere in their conten- 
tions." 

The hint about " subjecting themselves to some 
jurisdiction," so shrewdly let fall by Massachu- 
setts to the thirteen, soon bore fruit. In the au- 
tumn of 1642, four of the owners and inhabitants 
of Pawtuxet, William Arnold, Benedict Arnold his 



114 Early Rhode Island 

son, William Carpenter his son-in-law, and Robert 
Cole, solemnly placed their persons and their lands 
under the protection of the Puritan Commonwealth.^ 
The ostensible reason for this act was of course the 
disorder fomented at Providence by Gorton and 
his company ; and that the ostensible reason was 
also the real one is made to seem probable by the 
circumstance that thirteen of the leading inhab- 
itants had, a short time before, asked the Massa- 
chusetts Government to intervene in Providence 
affairs. But there are certain circumstances that 
would indicate that the real reason for the submis- 
sion could hardly have been as alleged : for ex- 
ample, the circumstance that William Harris — who 
was the leader of the proprietors (those most con- 
cerned for the security of property in the planta- 
tion), and who had joined in the appeal of the 
thirteen, and who, moreover, lived at Pawtuxet 
— did not unite with the submissionists ; and 
further, the circumstance (highly significant) that, 
as early as January, 1641, William Arnold, Wil- 
liam Carpenter, and Robert Cole had re-purchased 
from Sacononoco, a local sachem, the very Paw- 
tuxet lands which, coming to the submission- 
ists and the other original proprietors through 
Canonicus and Roger Williams, were now as a 
whole — in so far as Sacononoco could give 
title to them — being placed under the juris- 
diction of Massachusetts by the submissionists 
alone.~ 

' R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 53. 

'^ Paine's A Denial of the Charges of Forgery, p. 28. 



The Mainland and the Island 1 1 5 

But whatever doubt the reader may entertain 
that the disturbances created by the Gortonists 
were the underlying cause of the act of WilHam 
Arnold and his coterie, Samuel Gorton entertained 
none. He had recently moved from Providence to 
Pawtuxet, and naturally thought that any act on 
the part of members of the proprietary class resident 
In the latter place which, like Arnold's, would con- 
tribute to his embarrassment, must be dictated by 
dread of him.^ When, therefore, notice was re- 
ceived at the plantation from John Winthrop and 
Thomas Dudley, respectively Governor and Deputy 
Governor of Massachusetts, that the Arnold coterie, 
" their families, lands and estates," had been taken 
under the protection and government of the Puri- 
tans, and that any proceedings affecting them must 
be conducted in an orderly way, and before the 
Massachusetts courts, Gorton, responding to the 
challenge, drew his pen, assorted his vocabulary 
(always rich), and set to work to tell Massachusetts 
his mind. What his mind was, may be gathered 

^ The ground of Gorton's quarrel with the Pawtuxet settlers was evidently 
their assertion of the power, as proprietors of the whole region, to exclude 
persons from the privileges of the common lands. Thus Gorton says : 
"Whereas some of us had small parcels of land laid out to build houses 
upon and plant corn, and all the rest lay common and undivided, as the 
custom of the country for the most part is, they would not permit us any 
more land . . . unless we would keep upon that which they confess to 
be our proper right, and they would admit of no division but by the foot 
or by the inch, and then we could neither have room to set a house, but 
part of it would stand on their land, nor put a cow to grass but immedi- 
ately her bounds were broken ; and then presently must the one be pulled 
down and the other put into the pound to make satisfaction," etc. Acts of 
this sort, and by mere " squatters " besides, were more than Gorton possibly 
could endure. — R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 52. 



1 1 6 Early Rhode Island 

from the following extracts from his communi- 
cation. 

" November 20th, 1642, Whereas, we have received an 
irregular note, professing it is from the Massachusetts, with 
four men's names subscribed thereto (as principal authors of it) 
of the chief amongst you, we could not easily give credit 
unto the truth thereof ; not only because the conveyers of it 
unto us are known to be men whose constant and professed 
acts are worse than the counterfeiting of men's hands, but 
also because we thought that men of your parts and profession 
would never have prostrated their wisdom to such an act." 
And again : " When Pilate offers Jesus to the people to be 
judged, they profess they have such a law that puts no man 
to death ; they are all for mercy and forgiveness, when they 
are out of the judgment hall ; but let Pilate enter in thither, 
then nothing but ' crucify him ! crucify him ! ' be their accu- 
sation and witnesses never so false ; even so in your dealings 
with men in your Jewish brotherhood, your law is all for 
mercy ; to redress, to reform, and for the preservation both of 
soul and body ; do but enter into the common hall, then, as 
Pilate asked, am I a Jew, so do ye . . , your power must 
have tribute paid unto it, so far as men's names to be branded 
with infamy, depriving women and children of things neces- 
sary, ... so that the professed mercy and clemency of 
your law to exercise censures only for amendment of life, 
comes unto this issue, to send both soul and body to SheoU 
forever, without redress and all hope of recovery." 

The note from which the foregoing extracts are 
taken — a note covering twenty-five compact pages, 
as printed — having been duly despatched, Gorton 
and his company discounted its reflex effect by 
shortly afterwards (January, 1643) leaving " their 
lands, houses, and labors" at Pawtuxet (a spot 
now under the iron hand of the Puritans, locally 
made manifest in the person of William Arnold as 



The Mainland and the Island 117 

justice of the peace), and removing twelve miles 
to the southward to a place called Shawomet (War- 
wick), which they had purchased from Miantonomi, 
and which was clearly beyond any bounds over 
which upon any pretext Massachusetts could, either 
in law or conscience, claim jurisdiction. 

The removal in question marks the end of the 
case of Gorton and the proprietors of Providence 
and Pawtuxet, in so far as it calls for attention at 
this point. 

What befell the Professor of the Mysteries of 
Christ and his adherents in their retreat at Shaw- 
omet will be told in the chapter entitled " The 
Harrying of the Gortonists." 

II. THE ISLAND : PORTSMOUTH NEWPORT 

But, meanwhile, what concerning the settlers of 
Aquidneck ? When we last saw them, which was 
at Providence on the 24th of March, 1638, they, to 
the number of nineteen persons ^ (twelve of whom 
were members of the Boston Church), had just 
signed a compact of government, and received, in 
the name of William Coddington, a deed from 

' William Coddington, John Clarke, William Hutchinson, Jr., John 
Coggeshall, William Aspinwall, Samuel Wilbore, John Porter, John San- 
ford, Edward Hutchinson, Jr., Thomas Savage, William Dyer, William 
Freeborne, Phillip Shearman, John Walker, Richard Carder, William Baul- 
ston, Edward Hutchinson, Sr., Henry Bull, Randall Holden. All of the 
foregoing, excepting Coddington, Edward Hutchinson, Jr., and Holden, 
were named in the act disarming the Antinomians. Three returned to 
Massachusetts, — Edward Hutchinson, Jr. , Edward Hutchinson, Sr., and 
William Aspinwall. 



1 1 8 Early Rhode Island 

Canonicus and Miantonomi to Rhode Island. The 
compact signed was the following : 

" We, whose names are underwritten, do here solemnly in 
the presence of Jehovah, incorporate ourselves into a Body 
Politick, and, as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives, 
and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute 
laws of His, given us in His holy word of truth, to be guided 
and judged thereby." 

Having put their hands to the compact, the Aquid- 
neck settlers while still at Providence proceeded to 
effect a governmental orp^anization. 

They elected William Coddington chief magis- 
trate under the designation of Judge, covenant- 
ing " to yield all due honor unto him, according 
to the laws of God " ; he in turn covenanting 
" to do justice and judgment impartially " accord- 
ing to the same laws. They also elected William 
Aspinwall secretary, and William Dyer clerk. 
About the ist of April the entire company, armed 
with their written constitution and their title-deed 
from the sachems, took possession of the north 
shore of Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, at a spot (Po- 
casset) where a quiet cove commanded an outlook 
upon the beautiful bay of Mount Hope, and, having 
compounded with the sachem and Indians in im- 
mediate occupancy for five fathoms of white beads, 
ten coats, and twenty hoes, began their plantation. 

The government by single magistrate, or Judge, 
lasted about nine months, during which period 
necessary laws or ordinances were passed by the 
body politic in town meeting. A fundamental 



The Mainland and the Island 1 1 9 

rule was that " none should be received as inhabi- 
tants or Freemen, to build or plant upon the Island, 
but such as should be received in by the consent of 
the Body." On January 2, 1639, the constitution 
was modified by the adoption of a provision for 
three Elders who were to be associated with the 
Judge in administering public affairs. It was to be 
the duty of the Elders to assist " in the execution 
of justice and judgment," in " the regulating and 
ordering of all offences and offenders," and in "the 
drawing up and determining of such rules and laws 
as [should] be according to God, which conduce to 
the good and welfare of the commonwealth." The 
Judge, together with the Elders, " [should] rule and 
govern according to the general rule of the word of 
God," but ** when they [had] no particular rule from 
God's word," by the specific direction of the body 
politic. Moreover, there were to be quarterly 
meetings of the body politic, at which "all cases, 
actions and rules, which [had] passed through [the] 
hands [of the Judge and Elders]," were " to be 
scanned and weighed by the word of Christ." And 
" if by the Body, or any of them, the Lord [should] 
be pleased to dispense light to the contrary of what 
by the Judge and Elders [had] been determined 
formerly, then and there it [should] be repealed as 
the act of the Body." ^ 

The provisions of the amended constitution of 
the Antinomian refugees who settled on Aquid- 
neck bespeak plainly the stirrings of that individ- 
ualistic and hence democratic spirit which was 

^R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., pp. 63, 64. 



1 20 Early Rhode Island 

implicit in Antinomianism, as — both in the case of 
Germany under Luther, and of New England under 
Cotton — the protest against "legalism" and formal- 
ism. First there had been (embodying the princi- 
ple of order) the single magistrate — the autocratic 
Judge ; now there was to be a division of authority 
between the Judge and Elders, and besides (which 
was a long step toward democracy) a power of 
absolute veto on the part of the freemen, a power 
which might be exercised four times a year. 

But what is perhaps even more striking than the 
democratic spirit implicit in the new common- 
wealth, is the tough, Jewish, theocratic husk, or 
exterior, in which the kernel of democracy lay 
latent. Externally, indeed, the new commonwealth 
was a Theocracy of the most absolute type. There 
was not only the Bible as the source of law, but care 
had been taken to emphasize the point that it was 
the Bible of Moses and Joshua, rather than (as 
might have been expected from the advocates of a 
covenant of grace) the Bible of Christ and the 
Apostle Paul, by designating the chief magistrate 
Judge, and by associating with him a Sanhedrim of 
Elders in imitation of the Commonwealth of Israel.^ 
This, had the form of government remained un- 

' The Hebrew Commonwealth embraced the period from the Exodus to 
Saul. During this time the rulers were Moses, Joshua, and the Judges. 
The latter were " protectors of the law and defenders of religion." They 
" summoned the senatorial and popular assemblies, proposed subjects for 
their deliberation, presided in their councils, and executed their resolu- 
tions." They were "without pomp of followers or equipage," and their 
compensation was gratuitous merely. Elders — the basis of the Sanhedrim 
— were chosen by Moses, the founder of the commonwealth. — Oscar S. 
Straus, Origin of Republican Form 0/ Government, pp. 101-117. 



The Mainland and the Island 121 

modified for any considerable time, — unmodified, 
that is, by giving the freemen a negative in some 
form upon the acts of the Judge and Elders, — 
would have indicated that the Antinomians, victims 
of persecution in Massachusetts were, when setting 
up a form of polity for themselves on Aquidneck, 
as hopelessly inconsistent and reactionary as had 
been the Puritans, victims of persecution in Eng- 
land, when setting up a form of polity in America. 
Such a negative on the part of the freemen, how- 
ever, being granted, it was not long ere the real 
democracy of the Antinomians found vent, and this 
so freely that the theocratic husk environing it was 
rent asunder and destroyed. 

But the course of our narrative again brings be- 
fore us Mistress Anne Hutchinson. Having been 
banished from Massachusetts by the civil power, it 
was now her fate, pending her actual removal, 
which the court had deferred, to be dealt with by 
the Boston Church. Her civil condemnation had 
taken place November 8, 1637, and by March 15, 
1638, — just one week after her husband, William 
Hutchinson, had signed the compact of government 
for Aquidneck, — the church was ready to proceed. 
Mistress Hutchinson presented herself at the close 
of the regular service on Lecture day, and there- 
upon the Rev. John Wilson delivered a short 
exordium as follows : 

" We have herd this day very sweetly that we are to cast 
downe all our Crownes at the feete of Christ Jesus : Soe let 
every one be content to deny all Relations of Father, Mother, 



12 2 Early Rhode Island 

Sister, Brother, Friend, Enemy, & to cast downe all our 
Crownes ; & whatsoever Judgment or Opinion that is taken 
up may be cast downe at the feete of Christ ; & let all be car- 
ried by the rules of God's word & tried by that Rule ; and if 
there be any Error, let no one Rejoyce." 

The church members were then asked to sit to- 
gether, so that they might be distinguished from 
the rest of the congregation, and one of the presid- 
ing elders, Mr. Leverett, said : " Sister Hutchinson, 
here is divers opinions layd to your charge, . . . 
& I must request you, in the name of the Church, 
to declare whether you hold them or renownce 
them, as they be read to you." 

The temptation is strong to relate the church 
trial of Anne Hutchinson in Boston, occupying, as 
it did, not only the 15th, but also the 22d of March, 
with something of the detail employed in relating 
the civil trial at Cambridge ; but the later trial has 
not the same pertinence to our theme as had the 
earlier, and the temptation will be resisted. Suffice 
it to say that before the church she maintained the 
two prime heresies, that " the souls of men are 
mortal by generation, but are afterwards made im- 
mortal by Christ's purchase," and that " there is no 
resurrection of [the mortal body], but that those 
who are united to Christ will have new bodies." 
Upon the second of these heresies (she having 
confessed to error in the first), she was adjudged 
subject to admonition by the vote of the entire 
church, — her two sons only excepted. One of her 
sons openly protested against admonition, saying 
that his mother " not being accused for any haynows 



The Mainland and the Island 1 23 

fact, but only for opinion, he could not consent that 
the church should proceed yet to admonish her for 
this." Thereupon the sons were included in the 
admonition meted to the mother, the Rev. John 
Cotton calling upon them to consider how, "by 
your pleadings for her & hinderinge the proceed- 
ings of the church against her, you have proved 
Vipers to Eate through the very Bowells of your 
Mother to her Ruine." ^ During the administration 
of the admonition Anne Hutchinson interrupted 
Cotton with the remark that she had held none of 
the opinions for which she was now censured be- 
fore or during her civil trial. This was flatly con- 
tradicted by the ministers ; wherefore she was 
declared to have told a lie, was cast out of the 
church, proclaimed excommunicate, and delivered 
up to Satan. 

It was of course expected that, as excommunicate 
and under the ban, the culprit would be deeply de- 
jected, but such did not prove to be the case. The 
Rev. Thomas Welde records with evident chagrin 
that " since the sentence of excommunication . , . 
she is not affected with any remorse but glories in it, 
and fears not the vengeance of God which she lies 
under, as if God did work contrary to his own 
word, and loosed from heaven what his church had 
bound upon earth." 

Although cheerful. Mistress Hutchinson was now 
an outcast alike from the secular and relio-ious fel- 
lowship of Massachusetts, and on the 28th of March, 

' Robert Keayne's Report, printed in Antinomianism in the Col. of 
Mass. Bay (Prince Soc), p. 285. 



124 Early Rhode Island 

1638, shook the dust of that commonwealth from 
her feet forever. She went first to Mount Wollas- 
ton, where her husband owned a farm, and then by 
the overland route to Aquidneck. As has already 
been incidentally remarked, twelve members of the 
Boston Church were among the nineteen signers of 
the compact of government for Aquidneck, so that 
when the frail exile reached Pocasset (Portsmouth) 
she found herself with friends. Indeed, Winthrop 
notes it as a providence of God that the twelve 
were not present in Boston when Anne Hutchinson 
was before the church ; for if they had been, he felt 
it to be doubtful whether the vote of excommuni- 
cation ever would have been passed. During the 
summer and autumn of 1638, there was a considerable 
emigration of Antinomians and heretics in general 
from the uncongenial air of Massachusetts, for it is 
stated by Winthrop at this time that " many of Bos- 
ton, and others who were of Mistress Hutchinson's 
judgment and party, removed to the Isle of Aqui- 
day ; and others, who were of the rigid separation 
and savored Anabaptism, removed to Providence." 
This exodus, so far as Aquidneck was concerned, 
no doubt tended to the democratization of the 
theocratic autocracy which had been established 
under Coddington, and it, furthermore, somewhat 
alarmed Massachusetts. In December, John Cotton 
preached a doleful sermon upon the heresies which 
were rampant, suggesting in such cases, first, a 
reference to the church, and afterwards, if necessary, 
action by the civil power ; but even then fine or 
imprisonment rather than banishment. This drew 



The Mainland and the Island 125 

a response from Anne Hutchinson, who, evidently 
deeming the occasion ripe for the appHcation of the 
maxim, sartor resartus, or the tailor tailored, sent 
to the Boston Church a formal admonition. The 
message was declined, but it contributed to stir up 
the church to look after its erring members in their 
new abode, as presently will be seen. Mistress 
Hutchinson's message would indicate that she was 
still actively interested in religious matters ; and 
indeed Winthrop notes, soon after her arrival at the 
Island, that she was "exercising publicly." He 
also notes at this time, and again early in 1639, that 
excommunicated persons were both entertained at 
Aquidneck and received as communicants, so that 
" in a disorderly way" a church had been gathered. 

These notations, taken in connection with a 
notation by the same hand in 1638, to the effect 
that "one Nicholas Easton, a tanner and associate 
of Anne Hutchinson, was teaching at Aquidneck that 
every of the elect had the Holy Ghost and also the 
devil indwelling," and that " one Heme " was teach- 1 
ing there " that women had no souls," serve to em- 
phasize the fact that the individualistic or democratic 
element (so strong at Providence), and which in 
new communities is so uniformly found allied with 
manual occupations and religious vagaries, was 
being rapidly augmented on the Island to the peril 
of the Coddington theocratic autocracy. 

Moreover, while Winthrop was sadly shaking 
his head over the strange doctrines of Easton the 
tanner, and of "one Heme" of unnamed occupa- 
tion, the democratic element in Pocasset had made 



1 26 Early Rhode Island 

a powerful acquisition. Samuel Gorton was ar- 
rived from Plymouth, fresh from his scoring of that 
jurisdiction for its disregard of the common law, 
and ready, as soon as he should recover breath, to 
fix the stigma of his contempt upon Coddington as 
a government without a country. In other words, 
the disintegrating influence of Anne Hutchinson 
and the Antinomians was now re-enforced by the 
more highly disintegrating influence of the clothier 
and Professor of the Mysteries of Christ. It is 
with little surprise, therefore, that we learn that, on 
April 28, 1639, the entire Coddington government, 
consisting of the Judge himself, the three Elders, 
Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall, and William 
Brenton, and the clerk, William Dyer, together 
with John Clarke, Jeremy Clarke, Thomas Hazard, 
and Henry Bull, as lay supporters, withdrew from 
the fellowship of Pocasset, and signed a compact 
"to propagate a Plantation in the midst of the 
Island or elsewhere " ; " engaging to bear equal 
charges, answerable to [their] strength and estates, 
in common "; " [their] determination [to be] by 
major voice of Judge and Elders, the Judge to 
have a double voice." ^ 

As will at once be recognized, the above-named 
seceders were the very pith and marrow — in every 
respect save that of fanatical enthusiasm — of the 
Aquidneck settlement. They were with slight ex- 
ception men alike of property, experience, and equi- 
poise ; and it seems but reasonable to presume that 
their course in separating from their brethren was 

' R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 87. 



The Mainland and the Island 127 

dictated by the natural incompatibility at Pocasset 
between a growing radicalism and their own con- 
servatism. It is Winthrop's remark that "at Aqui- 
day the people grew very tumultuous and put out 
Mr. Coddington and the other three magistrates." 
Without going this far, we may, I think, properly 
conclude that the case was one where, as between 
ministry and opposition, the ministry, upon defeat 
before the country, instead of resigning took the 
novel step of withdrawing and setting up for them- 
selves in the wilderness. Something of a parallel 
may be found in Roger Williams's projected retire- 
ment, at a later date, to " Little Patience." 

The Coddington government having withdrawn, 
and, moreover, having taken the official records 
with them, it became necessary for those left at 
Pocasset — a decided majority of the whole — to at- 
tack the problem of civil order de novo. Accord- 
ingly, on April 30th, to the number of thirty-one 
persons, they signed a compact wherein they ac- 
knowledged themselves " the legal subjects of his 
majesty King Charles," and in his name bound 
themselves " into a Civil Body Politic, unto his 
laws according to matters of justice." They also 
on the same date covenanted to be governed (ac- 
cording to the major voice) " by the ruler or Judge 
amongst [them] in all transactions for the space of 
one year, he behaving himself according to the 
same." William Hutchinson was then chosen Judge 
or chief magistrate, and with him were associated 
eight Assistants; both the Judge and Assistants 
had been signers of the original compact of March 



1 28 Early Rhode Island 

7, 1638, but (somewhat singularly) the Judge alone 
was a signer of the new compact. Finally it was 
enacted that the Assistants should have jurisdic- 
tion in cases involving not more than ^40 but 
that regular quarterly courts should be held, with 
a jury of twelve men, " to do right betwixt man 
and man." " This," remarks Judge George A. Bray- 
ton, "was the earliest provision for regular courts 
for the trial of causes made in [Rhode Island]." 

In the foregoing steps taken by the people of 
Pocasset may be found clear grounds for the infer- 
ence that the secession of the Coddingrton crovern- 
ment was caused by the growth of democratic 
sentiment in the community ; for, within two days 
from the date of the secession, those remaining had 
completely revolutionized the State. They had 
substituted the laws of the realm for the laws of 
Moses, had limited the official term of the chief 
magistrate (henceforth an Israelitish Judge only in 
name) to one year, and had established trial by 
jury. In their choice of Judge, too, they had recog- 
nized advanced opinions by uniting upon the man 
who had the distinction of being the husband of 
Anne Hutchinson. But what is perhaps the most 
significant fact of all is one not mentioned above, 
namely, that they had received into fellowship Sam- 
uel Gorton and three of those who, later on, were 
to be his faithful disciples, — John Wickes, Sampson 
Shotton, and Robert Potter. Of the thirty-one 
signers of the compact at Pocasset, fifteen (nearly 
one half) were unable to write their names, — a 
further indication of tendencies the reverse of aris- 



The Mainland and the Island 129 

tocratic ; but It is worthy of remark that in the 
fifteen thus invidiously distinguished, Wickes, Shot- 
ton, and Potter are not to be included. 

Meanwhile the Coddington party, with Nicholas 
Easton as pioneer, were prospecting along the 
southern shore of Aquldneck. There is something 
fairly Arcadian — something suggestive of early 
Greek tribal migrations — in such removals as this 
of Coddington's. It was not of the proportions 
of the migfration of Hooker to Connecticut in 
the summer following the banishment of Roger 
Williams, when, attended by their families and 
followed by their herds, the settlers made their 
way through grassy and flowering solitudes to 
the site of Hartford, but small as it was, it 
could not have been without its charm. The 
party no doubt proceeded on calm, warm days, 
and by shallop (for it was May), keeping near the 
shore, and amusing themselves with studying the 
reflections in the water and the bursting buds and 
foliage that lined their course. As early as May 
1st, Easton records in his Diary ^ that he, with his 
two sons Peter and John, passed the preceding 
night at a place which they named Coaster's Har- 
bor, and that the same day they came to the site of 
Newport. Between May ist and i6th, the whole 
microscopic colony had arrived, and had erected 
huts for shelter. Easton's hut was the first built, 
and stood on the east side of what is now Farewell 

' The Diary consisted merely of a few jottings made in a copy of the first 
edition of Morton's New England's Memorial. 
VOL. 1.— 9 



1 30 Ea''Hy Rhode Island 

Street, a little to the west of the site of the Friends' 
meeting-house. On the i6th the first town meet- 
ing of the settlers was held, and the location of the 
settlement definitely fixed ** by the seaside south- 
ward " ; but not without hesitation, in view of the 
formidable swamp which existed along the course 
of the present Thames Street. The name New- 
port was then chosen,^ and the line of division 
between Newport and Pocasset drawn at a distance 
five miles north and east from the former town.^ 

The winter of 1639-40 at Newport was a mem- 
orable one. It was made so by the circumstance 
that the food supply (aside from game and fish, 
which fortunately were to be obtained) diminished to 
such a point that an enumeration of the inhabitants 
was taken as a basis for a division of the store of 
corn. This revealed the fact — interesting to us 
now, as well as to the Newporters then — that the 
number of those among whom the corn supply (loS 
bushels) must be divided was ninety-six. Lech- 
ford — the English lawyer who passed nearly four 
years in Massachusetts (1637-41) and who vis- 
ited both Providence and Aquidneck — computes 
the population of the entire Island in this or the 
following year at some two hundred families. It is 
probable that two hundred persons would have 

' Probably after Newport, Isle of Wight. 

* On September 14, 1640, the course of this line was indicated as fol- 
lows: " To begin half a mile beyond the River commonlie called Sachuis 
River being the River that lies next beyond Mr. Brenton's Land on the 
South East side of the Island towards Portsmouth, and so on in a straight 
line to run to the nearest part of the Brook to the hunting Wigwamm now 
standing in the highway between the two Towns, and so by that line to the 
sea on the North side of the Island." — R. I. Col. Rec., vol. i., pp. io8, 109. 



The Mainland and the Island 131 

been a more correct computation, and that at the 
same date the population of Providence was little 
more than half as great. 

But during this same winter, while at Newport 
famine was with difficulty kept at arm's length, 
Portsmouth was stirred by a committee from Bos- 
ton. Anne Hutchinson's letter of admonition to 
the Boston Church had at length borne fruit, and 
three estimable gentlemen from that communion — 
persons " of a lovely and winning spirit," the Rev. 
Thomas Welde calls them, — in other words, Cap- 
tain Edward Gibbons, Mr. William Hibbins, and 
Mr. John Oliver — were sent to look after the 
wandering sheep. They bore, says Winthrop, let- 
ters to " Mr. Coddington and the rest of our mem- 
bers of Aquiday, to understand their judgments 
in divers points of religion, . . . and to require 
them to give account to the Church of their unwar- 
rantable practice in communicating with excom- 
municated persons." Reaching their destination 
about February 28, 1640, after a series of small 
providences and mishaps all duly noted, the com- 
mittee asked for a meeting at which to present 
their letters, but this was refused on the ground 
that one (Congregational) church had no power 
over another. The refractory members, or ex- 
members, of the Boston communion were then 
each privately waited upon by the committee, but 
with scant result. Mr. Hutchinson said very 
plainly that " he was more nearly tied to his wife 
than to the church, and that he thought her to be 



132 Early Rhode Island 

a dear saint and servant of God," — an utterance 
somewhat noteworthy as, so far as known, the only 
one in his wife's behalf put forth by Mr. Hutchin- 
son during the whole course of her persecution. 
If so, Winthrop's recorded estimate of the man, as 
" of weak parts," must be admitted to be highly 
discriminating. 

As for Mistress Hutchinson herself, she met the 
committee with much of her old-time spirit. 

" We came then," says John Oliver in his version of what oc- 
curred, " to Mistress Hutchinson, and told her that we had a 
message to do to her from our church. She answered, ' There 
are lords many and gods many, but I acknowledge but one 
Lord. Which Lord do you mean ? ' We answered, ' We came 
in the name of but one Lord and that is God.' ' Then,' saith 
she, * so far we agree, and where we do agree, let it be set 
down.' Then we told her. ' We had a message to her from 
the church of Christ in Boston.' She replied, ' She knew no 
church but one.' We told her, ' In Scripture the Holy Ghost 
calls them churches.' She said, 'Christ had but one spouse.' 
We told her, ' He had in some sort as many spouses as saints.' 
But for our church she would not acknowledge it any church 
of Christ." ' 

It is clear from the above, as also from an entry 
by Winthrop in his Journal, dated March 24, 1640, 
that there was, at the time of the committee's visit 
to Portsmouth, a church — an irregular Congrega- 
tional church, so to speak — in existence there.^ 

^ Robert Keayne's Report, AnHnomianism in the Col. of Mass. Bay 
(Prince Sec), p. 398. 

' Keayne's Report (p. 398) distinctly alludes to a church at Portsmouth 
and also (p. 401) to one at Newport. Lechford in his Plaine Dealing de- 
nies the existence of a church at Portsmouth, but says that there was one 
at Newport. Lechford, however, probably visited Rhode Island after 



The Mainland and the Island 133 

As between Portsmouth and Providence — in re- 
spect to church affairs — the fact is also clear. 
The latter community, although filled with religious 
sects, was not itself essentially religious. The 
prime object of its inhabitants was to put money 
in their purse, — in other words to get land, — and, 
to this end, to be as free from surveillance, whether 
ecclesiastical or civil, as possible. It was, as we 
have seen, only Roger Williams and a few others 
that by the year 1638 had organized a church. 
This society, established by a man of Baptist pro- 
clivities, and in the midst of a community made up 
of elements more fitly to be characterized as Bap- 
tist, or Anabaptist, than anything else, was naturally 
of the Baptist order. Portsmouth, on the contrary, 
was a settlement where religion was a prime factor 
with all, and from the start. Both the Coddington 
and Hutchinson parties were actuated by it, and, 
as is evident from the replies made to the Boston 
committee by the Portsmouth people in March, 
1640, these people, even after the secession of the 
theocratic Coddington government, were yet Con- 
gregational. But while this is true, they — through 
their latitudinarianism — were fast drifting toward 
a Baptist, or at least Anabaptist, point of view. 

Accordingly we are not surprised to find Win- 
throp confiding to his journal, on June 21, 1641, 

March, 1640. So far as known, there was no ordained clergyman at 
Newport until the coming of Robert Lenthall, in August, 1640. 

The committee evidently visited both Portsmouth and Newport, for, 
while their report is very much muddled m its geography, Coddington 
states in a letter to Winthrop( May 22, 1640) that they were " courteously en- 
tertayned at both plantations" (Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vi., p. 315). 



134 Early Rhode Island 

that Mistress Hutchinson and those of Aquiday 
Island broached new heresies every year ; that now 

" divers of them [had] turned professed Anabaptists, would 
not wear any arms, denied all magistracy among Christians 
and maintained that there were no churches since those 
founded by the Apostles and evangelists, nor could any be, 
nor any pastors ordained, nor seals administered by such, and 
that the church was to want these all the time she continued 
in the wilderness, as yet she was," — 

a series of statements confirmed by Robert BailHe's 
remark in his Dissuasive, that Roger WilHams had 
told him that Mistress Hutchinson, after her hus- 
band had been chosen to office in Rhode Island, 
persuaded him to lay it down, upon the opinion, 
which newly she had taken up, of the unlawfulness 
of magistracy.^ 

Anabaptism, then, on the Island — and the form- 
ation there of any Baptist church — may confidently 
be ascribed to a time not only subsequent to the 
visit of the Boston committee, but subsequent to 
the formation of the Baptist church in Providence 
by Roger Williams. 

Aside from the secession of the Coddington 
government, the most noteworthy occurrence on 

' Disstiasive from the Errors of the Time, p. 150. 

William Hutchinson accepted office as Assistant after yielding up that of 
Judge, wherefore it may be inferred that his wife's views as to the unlawful- 
ness of magistracy were adopted after he had become an Assistant. 

The Schleitheim Confession of 1527 — the first definite Anabaptist pro- 
nouncement — forbids Christians to serve as magistrates. Hubmaier and 
Denck modify the rule about magistracy, by forbidding Christians to bear 
the magisterial sword for persecution. — Vedder's History of the Baptists, 
pp. 90, 106. 



TJie Mamland and the Island 135 

the island of Aquidneck, between 1639 ^^^ 1640, 
was the prompt drawing together again of the 
seceders and the original body. Neither were in 
fit condition to get on by themselves. The Theo- 
crats were too nearly all government, and the 
Hutchinson-Gorton combination was too nearly 
all opposition. Healthful political life required 
their joint activity. Moreover, the title to the 
lands of Aquidneck was vested in a company, or 
corporation, some of whom resided at Portsmouth 
and some at Newport, and this formed an underly- 
ing bond of a very strong character. 

Highly important steps toward a reunion of the 
towns were taken on the 25th of November, 1639. 
These were, first, a distinct acknowledgment by the 
Coddington party that they were " natural subjects 
of King Charles, their Sovereign Lord, and subject 
to his laws " ; second, a stipulation '* that all matters 
that concern the peace shall be by those that are 
officers of the peace transacted," and that " all ac- 
tions of the case or debt shall ... in such 
Courts as by order are here, and appointed, and 
by such Judges as are here deputed, be heard and 
legally determined " ; and third, an order that formal 
propositions for reunion be exchanged with Pocas- 
set, and "that Mr. Easton and Mr. John Clarke be 
desired to inform Mr. Vane by writing of the state 
of things here, and desire him to treate about the 
obtaining a Patent of the Island from his Majesty." 
As stated, the foregoing were steps highly impor- 
tant toward a reunion of the two Aquidneck com- 
munities, but they were more than that : they were 



136 Early Rhode Islajid 

steps of the utmost consequence and significance 
toward confirming the people of Rhode Island (as 
it territorially was to be) in the Rhode Island idea, 
— the idea of separation of Church and State, and 
hence of Freedom of Conscience, first clearly an- 
nounced this side the sea by Roger Williams,^ the 
child of the time-spirit, and since emphasized by 
such more or less unwitting instruments as Anne 
Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton. 

In other words, Coddington and his followers, 
by explicitly acknowledging King Charles and his 
laws, by taking action to secure a patent, and by 
seeking upon these grounds a reconciliation with 
Portsmouth, threw over once for all in Rhode 
Island the theocratic idea. Democracy, as repre- 
sented by the Hutchinson-Gorton element, had 
triumphed over Theocracy ; something, however, 
which neither of the democratic leaders perceived, 
for both opposed the reunion^: Mistress Hutch- 

' In founding the colony of Maryland, it was the intention of Lord 
Baltimore that all Christians — Protestant and Catholic alike — should 
have Freedom of Conscience (see instructions to the colonists, Calvert 
Papers, vol. i., p. 132). But it was equally Lord Baltimore's intention 
that such freedom should be limited to those who were Christians. 

As early as 1638, a proclamation was issued in Maryland against such as 
"cherish a faction in religion"; and on April 21, 1649, it was enacted 
that no persons "professing to believe in Jesus Christ" should "bee 
any waies troubled molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or 
her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province." But 
how strictly the foregoing act was to be construed is shown in the sup- 
plementary act providing for the visitation of the penalty of death upon 
any who should deny or revile the doctrine of the Trinity, and for the vis- 
itation of other penalties upon such as should utter words of reproach 
against the Virgin Mary or the Evangelists, or who should desecrate the 
Sabbath. — J. H. U. Studies, 10, ser. iv. 

* Letter of William Coddington to Governor Winthrop, December 9, 1639, 
Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vii., p. 279. 



The Mainland and the Island 137 

inson, perhaps, because she was human enough to 
wish to continue to be the wife of a chief magistrate ; 
perhaps — and this is the more Hkely — because she 
distrusted Coddington ; and Gorton, because the af- 
fair lacked equally the royal sanction and that of a 
majority of the freemen of both settlements. 

Reunion, nevertheless, was destined to take 
place, and on March 12, 1639-40, representatives 
from the two ends of the Island (on what basis 
selected is not known, probably on that of land 
ownership ; Samuel Gorton was not among them) 
met at Newport, and remodelled the original 
constitution. Provision was made for a chief 
magistrate to be styled Governor, for a second in 
office to be styled Deputy Governor, and for four 
ordinary magistrates to be styled Assistants. The 
titles Judge and Elder, with their high theocratic 
associations, were expressly abolished. It was 
furthermore provided that the Governor and two 
Assistants should always be chosen from one of 
the towns, and the Deputy Governor and the 
other two Assistants from the other. A chang-e 
of the name Pocasset to Portsmouth was con- 
firmed, and the following persons were elected to 
oftice under the new regime : Governor, William 
Coddington ; Deputy Governor, William Brenton ; 
Assistants, Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall, 
William Hutchinson, and John Porter. Of these, 
the three from Portsmouth were Hutchinson, Por- 
ter, and Brenton. There were also elected two 
treasurers, Robert Jeffreys of Newport, and Wil- 
liam Baulston of Portsmouth ; a secretary, William 



138 Early Rhode Island 

Dyer of Newport ; two constables, Jeremy Clarke 
for Newport, and John Sanford for Portsmouth ; 
and a sergeant for the Island, Henry Bull of New- 
port. The term for all the officers was fixed at 
one year, or until their successors should be in- 
stalled. The Governor and Assistants were made 
justices of the peace, and a commission, consisting 
of five from Portsmouth and three from Newport, 
was appointed to assign lands, the titles to which 
were to be duly placed on record.^ Thus the orig- 
inal government was again in the saddle — all 
who had held office at the time of the secession 
continuing still to hold it — but with colleagues, 
and upon conditions, both implied and express, 
which were well calculated to make those subject 
thereto wiser, if not sadder men. 

Nor did the democratic idea, which had now 
gained the mastery, hesitate long fully and com- 
pletely to avow itself. At the second General 
Court for the Island, held March 16 to 18, 1640- 
41, at Portsmouth, two fundamental declarations 
of polity were made, — declarations the acceptance 

* R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., pp. ioo-ro2. 

As early as May 20, 1638, an order was made at Pocasset that six-acre 
lots should be assigned to the proprietors. On June 27, and November 5, 
1638, it was ordered that newcomers must pay two shillings per acre for 
lands, and that house-lots thereafter assigned were to be three acres instead 
of six. A further land order (at Pocasset), of date July 5, 1639, was in 
conformity witli the practice at Providence since 1637-3S, and provided that 
" every man [owning] a house-lot should build upon the same within one 
year, or he should lose it." This on May 6, 1640 (after the reunion), was 
repealed. Meanwhile at Newport, on May 16, and June 5, 1639, it was 
ordered that lands should be laid out on the basis of four acres for each 
house-lot, the opinion at the same time being formally expressed that the 
Newport lands would reasonably accommodate about fifty families. 



The Mainland a7id the Island 139 

of which placed Portsmouth and Newport hence- 
forth abreast of Providence, as exempHfications of 
democracy in its advanced phase of complete sep- 
aration between Church and State. These decla- 
rations were : first, 

" It is ordered and unanimously agreed upon, that the Gov- 
ernment which this Bodie Politick doth attend unto in this 
Island and the Jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our Prince, is 
a Democracie or Popular Government ; that is to say, It is in 
the Powre of the Body of Freemen, orderly assembled, or the 
major part of them, to make or constitute Just Lawes by 
which they will be regulated, and to depute from among 
themselves such Ministers as shall see them faithfully exe- 
cuted between Man and Man " ; 

and second, 

" It [is] further ordered by the authority of this present 
Courte, that none be accounted a delinquent for Doctrine: 
Provided it be not directly repugnant to the Government or 
Lawes established." * 

So fully committed, indeed, had the people of 
Aquidneck now become to the Roger Williams 
principle of Soul Liberty, that, at a meeting of the 
court held September 17, 1641, it was ordered, 
" that the law of the last Courte made concerninof 
Libertie of Conscience in point of Doctrine is 
perpetuated."^ 

At the General Court of March 16, 1640-41, 
William Hutchinson was replaced as Assistant by 
William Baulston (very likely at his — Hutchinson's 
— own suggestion, and because of his wife's newly 

' Ji. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., pp. II2, 113. 
^ Ibid., p. 118. 



140 Early Rhode Island 

adopted views concerning magistracy, or office- 
holding, for Christians), and two important legis- 
lative measures were passed — one (thoroughly 
characteristic of the feeling at Aquidneck) respect- 
ing land ; and the other respecting a State seal. 
The first measure was as follows : 

" It is ordered Established and Decreed unanimouslie. that 
all mens' Properities in their lands of the Island and the 
Jurisdiction thereof, shall be such and soe free that neyther 
the State, nor any Person or Persons, shall intrude into it, 
molest him in itt, to deprive him of anything whatsoever that 
is, or shall be within that or any of the bounds thereof ; and 
that this Tenure and Propriety of his therein shall be continued 
to him, or his, or to whomsoever he shall assign it, for Ever." ' 

The measure regarding a seal was to the effect 
that this insignia of statehood should consist in "a 
sheafe of arrows bound up," with the device Amor 
vincet omnia " indented upon the Liess." 

Among other enactments which up to this time 
had been made was one of date May 6, 1640, re- 
quiring " particular or magisterial Courts" (consist- 
ing of the local magistrates and a jury) to be held 
monthly in each town. These were limited in 
jurisdiction to cases not involving " life and limb " ; 
and an appeal from them lay to the Court of Quarter 
Sessions (consisting of all the magistrates and a 
jury) which was to be held the first Tuesday in 
March, June, September, and December. There 
was also, on August 6, 1640, an act passed ad- 
mitting Mr. Robert Lenthall (a clergyman) ~ to be 

'i?. /. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. ii6. 

' " There is Mr. Lenthall a minister out of office and imployment and 



The Mainland and the Island 141 

a freeman ; and by a vote of the town of Newport 
he was at once " called to keep a public school 
for the learning of youth." The provision for 
education, so early made at Newport, serves once 
more to emphasize the higher plane, in respect to 
caste and culture, occupied by the Island settlers 
as compared with the settlers of Providence, where 
no school existed until 1663. It serves also to 
emphasize a like superiority, on the part of the 
Newport Coddingtons and Clarkes, to the Ports- 
mouth Hutchinsons, Gortons, Potters, and Shot- 
tons. But it may well be taken as compensative 
by the descendants of the latter, and of the Provi- 
dence individualists, that it was the principles of 
their ancestors which, " obstinately persisted in," 
made Rhode Island Rhode Island. 

Moreover, it is not altogether certain that even 
Newport at this juncture was a promising field for 
pedagogics, for before March, 1641-42, Mr. Len- 
thall had returned to England. It is possible that 
his departure was occasioned by theological differ- 
ences, for Winthrop tells us that prior to the 
2 1 St of June, 1 64 1, Nicholas Easton (the tanner 
aforementioned, albeit also Assistant under the 
Aquidneck Government) created such a disturb- 
ance in Newport religious circles (maintaining that, 
all things being by God, God must needs be the 
author of sin) that a schism was engendered, — 
Coddington and Coggeshall joining with Easton ; 

lives poorly. He stood upon his ministrie and against the church in the 
Bay." — From the MS. of Lechford's Plaine Dealing compared with the 
printed book. — Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d ser., vols. iii. and iv., p. 403. 



142 Early Rhode Island 

and Clarke, Harding, and Lenthall dissenting from, 
and publicly opposing him.-' 

The feeling of the people of Aquidneck with re- 
gard to the Indians, by whom they were encom- 
passed on every side, is evinced at this period in a 
treaty, a militia law, and a letter to Massachusetts. 
The letter is the well-known epistle indited on Sep- 
tember 14, 1640, by the Governors of Hartford, 
New Haven, and Aquidneck, proposing (with per- 
haps an implied allusion to the case of the Pe- 
quods) that the Indians be not "rooted out as 
being of the accursed race of Ham," but that 
they be gained as far as possible by "justice and 
kindness," and to that end, that some mutual ar- 
rangement be made for watching over them and 
preventing the development among them of hostile 
designs. By way of reply, the General Court of 
Massachusetts instructed the Governor, Thomas 
Dudley (of posthumous poetical fame), to say that 
" the Courte doth assent to all the propositions layde 
down, but that the answer shall be directed to Mr. 
Eaton, Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Haynes, only exclud- 
ing Mr. Coddington and Mr. Brenton, as men not 
to be capitulated withal by us, either for themselves 
or the people of the Island where they inhabit." ^ 

Meantime the denizens of the interior of the 
Island were causing trouble. The coverts of vines 
and undergrowth sheltered, besides deer (worth, as 

* This probably was the beginning of the movement that resulted in the 
conversion of Coddington to Quakerism. 
^ Mass. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 305. 



The Mainland and the Island 143 

venison, not less than twenty shillings the quarter), 
innumerable foxes and wolves, and these preyed 
upon the domestic animals of the settlers. Mian- 
tonomi was commissioned, through Roger Williams, 
to extirpate the pests in a grand hunt, but even 
after the hunt it was found necessary at intervals 
to "drive" the Island. 

But more troublesome than either the Indians 
encompassing Aquidneck, or the foxes and wolves 
infesting it, was Puritan Massachusetts watching it 
ever with a jealous eye, and harassing it — in equal 
measure with Providence — as a nest of heretics, 
"not to be capitulated with." On September 19, 
1642, therefore, it was deemed expedient — in view 
of the act of the Arnold coterie at Pawtuxet in 
comfortably ensconcing themselves beneath the pro- 
tection of the Puritans — to pass a law forbidding 
the sale of Aquidneck lands to any outside juris- 
diction or individual, on pain of forfeiture ; and — 
in view of the virtual refusal of Massachusetts to 
permit the inhabitants of Providence and Aquidneck 
to make purchases in its markets — "to treat with 
the Governor of the Dutch to supply us with neces- 
saries, and to take of our commodities at such rates 
as may be suitable." ^ 

^ R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 126, 

This movement toward friendly relations with the Dutch would seem to 
have had some political significance. Thus in a communication from New 
Netherlands to the home government, dated July 27, 1649, the following 
language is used : "In like manner those of Rhode Island when they were 
at variance with those of the Bay solicited leave to take shelter under the 
Dutch and to be subject to them ; there are proofs and documents in abun- 
dance with the Secretary or Directors of the Company, of all these things " 
{Docs. Relating to the Col. Hist, of N. Y., vol. i., p. 285). In this connection 



144 Early Rhode Island 

Under the accumulation of provoking circum- 
stances just enumerated, it is not to be wondered 
at that at this time (September 19, 1642) the 
Island government recurred to the subject of a 
royal patent — something which, by giving a legal 
status, would command for the Island a greater 
measure of respect, both from the Indians and 
from the chartered colonies established round 
about — and appointed a committee, consisting of 
their own members and of " Mr. Jeffreys, Mr. Hard- 
ing, and Mr. John Clarke," to arrange for immediate 
and serious action.^ The influence, however, which 
probably as much as, or more than, any other im- 
pelled in the direction of a charter was that of the 
example of Mr. Samuel Gorton, who by the time 
now reached had demonstrated at Providence his 
thesis that each individual squatter upon the public 
domain was purely a law unto himself. It is true 
that Gorton had failed to demonstrate this thesis 
at Portsmouth, but how unpleasantly near he had 
come to a demonstration, it is now incumbent upon 
us to ascertain. 

As has already been stated, Gorton was not a 
participator in any of the proceedings which led to 
the reunion of Portsmouth and Newport under one 
government. On the contrary, he opposed all such 
proceedings ; and not only so, but after the reunion 
had, on March 12, 1640, been effected, made no 

interest attaches to the remark of Winthrop, made in 1644, that it would 
"be a great inconvenience to the English should they [of Rhode Island] 
be forced to seek protection from the Dutch" {yournal, ii., 211). 
' Ji. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 125. 



The Mainland and the Island 145 

application to be received as an inhabitant. In his 
opinion, the government had no authority legally 
derived, neither had it the choice of the people, but 
was set up by itself. " I know," he says, referring 
to the choice, " not any more that was present in 
their creation but a Clergie man who blessed them 
in their inauguration." Animated by this thought, 
the Professor of the Mysteries of Christ, who also 
by no means eschewed politics, carefully reserved 
himself against the day of provocation. This came 
in about six months (August, 1640). 

" An ancient woman," says Edward Winslow in the Hypoc- 
risy Unmasked^ " having a cow going in the field where 
Samuel Gorton having some land, this woman fetching out 
her cow, Gorton's servant-maid fell violently upon the woman, 
beating and notoriously abusing her by tearing her haire about 
her, whereupon the old woman complaining to the Deputy 
Governor of the place, hee sendeth for the maid, and upon 
hearing the cause, bound her over to the Court." 

It seemed to be the fate of Gorton, wherever 
he went, to incur trouble in defence of the family 
serving-maid. At Plymouth he had suffered on 
account of one (Ellen Aldridge), and here at Ports- 
mouth he was to suffer on account of another. On 
the meeting of the court (which evidently was a 
meeting of the Quarter Sessions, for Coddington 
was present), Gorton appeared in the maid's stead 
(which was tolerated) and as her advocate. The 
testimony, according to Winslow, was all against 
the accused, whereupon Gorton fell to abusing the 
witnesses for the State, saying of one of them, a 
woman, — perhaps the daughter of the prosecutrix, 



VOL, I.— 10. 



146 Early Rhode Island 

— that '* she would not speak against her mother 
although she was damned where she stood," and 
calling a freeman present, who resented this lan- 
guage, "a saucy boy and a Jack-an-Apes." Wins- 
low also states that when John Wickes, a witness 
for the accused, was called and required to be 
sworn, both he and Gorton " jeered and laughed 
and told the court they were skilled in Idols," 
and that an oath was one, — a point which 
they urged until the court would hear no more ; 
that when the court had summed up the testimony 
for the "Jewry," Gorton openly accused the former 
of "wresting the witnesses " and "perverting jus- 
tice " ; that while speaking, Gorton flung his arms 
about, touching the Deputy Governor (who was 
seated at a table with his back to the speaker) 
"with his handkerchief buttons about the ears,'^ 
upon which the latter said, " What, will you fall 
about my ears ? " and Gorton answered, " I know 
not whether you have any ears or no ; and if you 
have, I know not where they stand ; but I will not 
touch them with a pair of tongs." 

After this outburst, Gorton, as Winslow has it, 
was ordered committed " upon his mutinous and 
seditious speeches," but, aided by Wickes and 
Randall Holden, — evidently already his disciples, 

— " stopped the way with such insolency that the 
Governor was forced to rise from the Bench to 
helpe forward the Command with his person." 
Lechford, in his Plaine Dealmg, relates that Cod- 
dington called out, " You that are for the King, lay 
hold on Gorton ! " and that Gorton retorted, " All 



The Mainland and the Island 147 

that are for the King, lay hold on Coddington." 
At all events, the issue of the comedy was that 
Wickes was put in the stocks, and Gorton chastised, 
probably at the whipping-post. The sufferings of 
the latter (according to Winslow) drew from "some 
of his faction " the remark, " Now Christ Jesus has 
suffered." 

Gorton thus having been punished for his abus- 
iveness, was, either late in 1640 or early in 1641, 
banished from Aquidneck. Whether the banish- 
ment was in pursuance of an indictment and trial, 
is not altogether certain. Coddington, it is true, 
in 1646 produced a paper which he gave to Wins- 
low, and which he called " the sum of the present- 
ment of the grand jury " against Gorton ; but so 
far as appears he did not furnish anything to show 
that there had been a verdict or sentence under the 
indictment. It is possible that before the indict- 
ment was found Gorton had left the Island, for as 
late as December, 1641, John Wickes, then on the 
Mainland, was indicted for defamation of the 
Island and Governor, — an offence consisting prob- 
ably in the things said and done by him at and in 
connection with the trial of Gorton's serving-maid, 
a year and a half preceding. Be that as it may, 
the influence of Gorton for disturbance was evi- 
dently felt to exist independently of his own 
immediate presence on Aquidneck, for, on March 
16 or 17, 1642, Richard Carder, Randall Holden, 
Sampson Shotton, and Robert Potter (all Gorton- 
ists, and all then with their master at Providence) 
were disfranchised, and, together with John Wickes, 



148 Early Rhode Islaiid 

made subject to arrest should they come upon the 
Island armed. Moreover, in 1644 Coddington bore 
testimony, in a letter to Governor Winthrop, that 
all along there had been a party both at Portsmouth 
and Newport which thought that the Gorton ele- 
ment "gave strength." 

The thesis of Gorton regarding squatter sover- 
eignty, successful at Providence, had barely failed 
of success on Aquidneck ; and by the autumn of 
1642 it was indeed high time that steps be taken 
forever to set it at naught by securing a patent 
from the King or Parliament. As we have seen, 
the original intention had been to have John Clarke 
open negotiations by letter through Sir Henry 
Vane. But now a different plan was adopted : 
Roger Williams was selected as the intermediary, 
and operations were to be conducted upon English 
soil. It was in every way most fitting that Williams 
be commissioned for the task in view. To his 
position upon the principle of separation of Church 
and State, and hence of Freedom of Conscience, 
accepted in Providence from the start, Aquidneck 
had now fully advanced. Williams accordingly 
stood at the moment as the embodiment of the 
one idea in the complete recognition of which the 
Narragansett settlements were a unit. His selection 
as representative for the settlements, however, was 
not dictated by this consideration. It is not even 
known what, if anything, was done by the people 
of Providence toward authorizing Williams to 
represent them, along with the people of Aquid- 



The Mainland and the Island 149 

neck, in a joint application to the English Govern- 
ment. The whole matter must have been summarily- 
arranged by the committee which, on September 
19, 1642, was named by the Aquidneck General 
Court ; and with them the moving cause in the 
selection of Williams was doubtless his known in- 
timacy with Vane, — the man who, as Governor of 
Massachusetts, had sided with the Antinomians, 
and of whom the committee had since heard as 
witnessing against Strafford, as leading in the im- 
peachment of Laud, and as Treasurer of the Navy. 

It took the first foreign representative of Rhode 
Island some time to perfect arrangements for his 
trip to England. Joined to various minor em- 
barrassments there was the grave difficulty that, as 
an exile from the Puritan Commonwealth, he was 
debarred from taking ship at Boston. To obviate 
this, he went to Manhattoes (now New York), 
where, finding "hot wars between the Dutch and 
the Indians " — wars made spectacularly terrible by 
the Dutch "bowries" in flames, and "the flights 
and hurries of men, women, and children, the 
present removal of all that could for Holland " — 
he attempted, it is said, to restore peace with such 
of the savages as inhabited Long Island. Thus by 
a striking coincidence he was present upon what was 
shortly to be the scene of the tragic end of his blind 
but powerful coadjutor in domesticating in America 
the time-spirit of Toleration — Anne Hutchinson. 

William Hutchinson had died in 1642. Shortly 
afterwards his wife — fleeing; the wrath of Massa- 
chusetts, which at the time (as will be related in 



150 Early Rhode Isla7id 

Chapter VII.) was seeking to subject as much of 
the heretical Narragansett country as possible to its 
jurisdiction — had removed to a point identified 
in Brodhead's Histoiy of New York as Annie's 
Hoeck, near East Chester. Here, in the summer 
of 1643, — some weeks after the coming of Wil- 
liams to Manhattoes, — she and all her family save 
one daughter (sixteen persons) were murdered by 
the Indians, and her house and cattle burned.^ 

Anne Hutchinson, ever since her banishment, 
had been a veritable bete 7ioire to the Puritans. 
They, one and all, from the sagacious Winthrop to 
the narrow-minded Welde, regarded her thence- 
forth with a feelinp- of mingled horror and amaze- 
ment. She had been pronounced anathema 
maranatha by the church, and the wonder to all 
was that as such she was not visited by God's light- 
nings, or in some other way equally summary and 
unmistakable made the example of supernatural 
vengeance. Welde, indeed, was disposed openly 
to take the Deity to task for permitting Mistress 
Hutchinson to live untortured even by remorse, 

' The exact date of the murder has not been determined, Dr, George E. 
Ellis, in his Life of Antte Hutchinson, gives August 20th as the date, but 
upon what authority does not appear. The second letter of Gorton's com- 
pany to the Massachusetts Government, bearing date September 15, 1643, 
alludes in a postscript to the event as of recent occurrence, stating : " We 
need not put a seal unto this our warrant. . . . The Lord hath added one 
to our hands in the very conclusion of it" {/?. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., 
p. 269). 

The daughter spared by the Indians was Susannah Hutchinson. She 
was recovered from captivity by the Dutch, and, on December 30, 165 1, 
was married to John Cole. She was the ancestress of Thomas Hutchinson, 
last Royal Governor of Massachusetts and the author of Hutchinson's History 
of Massachusetts. 



The Mainland and the Island 151 

for, as we have already seen, he lamented that In 
her case God should seemingly "work contrary to 
his word." Something, however, of what was ex- 
pected by devout Puritans righteously to befall 
their victim, had befallen her soon after her re- 
moval to Aquidneck. She there, — by reason of 
association with one Hawkins, a midwife of St. 
Ives, "notorious," according to Winthrop, "for 
familiarity with the devill," — was (also according 
to Winthrop) delivered of a monstrous birth, or, 
as Welde has it, thirty monstrous births, a number 
corresponding with that of the erroneous opinions 
for which she had been banished. But if the visi- 
tation of God's hand was visible in the monstrous 
birth, it was doubly visible in the murder perpe- 
trated by the Indians. There now no longer could 
be any mistake. God had at last done his full 
duty by his church. In the words of Welde, 

" I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever be- 
fore commit the like outrage upon any one family or families, 
and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seene herein, 
to pick out this woful woman to make her, and those belong- 
ing to her, an unheard of heavie example of their cruelty 
above all others." 

It was with, so to speak, a track of blood and 
fire in his good ship's wake that Roger Williams 
pursued his voyage to England. 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY RHODE ISLAND GOVERNMENT AS REVEALED IN 

THE LAND SYSTEMS OF PROVIDENCE 

AND AQUIDNECK 

IN the course of the preceding chapter, references 
have incidentally been made to various land 
transfers, and to various orders and enact- 
ments respecting landholding at Providence and 
on Aquidneck. It will now be convenient to re- 
capitulate these, and, adding some details, to 
ascertain how far they illustrate the interesting 
observation of Mr. J. Andrew Doyle, in his English 
Colonies in America, that " the New England 
Township was a landholder using its position for 
the corporate good, and watching jealously over the 
origin and extension of individual rights." 

In the case of Providence, the points to be men- 
tioned are the following : (i) The verbal trans- 
fer in 1636, by Canonicus and Miantonomi to Roger 
Williams, of the tract afterwards called the Provi- 
dence purchase ; (2) the formation, out of the few 
individuals collected at Providence within the first 
few months, of a "Towne fellowship " acting by 

152 



Providence and Aquidneck Land Systems 153 

"mutual consent " ; (3) the granting to various 
persons by this fellowship (between June, 1636, and 
March, 1636-37) of plots of "Ground"^; (4) 
the formal recognition by the fellowship, on May 
20, 1643, of the conditional character of these 
grants, in the order that "Matthew wesen shall have 
that horn share of ground which lieth etc., but if 
the said matthew wasen be absant from the towne 
above eighteen monthes, leving neither wife nor 
child heare, the afor saide land shall fall in to the 
townes hand again " ^ ; (5) the execution, on March 
24, 1637-38, by Canonicus and Miantonomi to 
Roger Williams, of a deed for the Providence pur- 
chase and for the tract afterwards called the Paw- 
tuxet purchase ; (6) the execution, on October 8, 
1638, by Roger Williams to the twelve persons 
who, with himself, constituted at the time the 
" Towne fellowship " at Providence, and to such 
others as the major part of these should subse- 
quently admit into that fellowship, of a deed to 

* The Providence Records, vol. i., pp. 1-5, disclose the following : An 
order in 1637 for the collection from various grantees of two shillings each, 
*' in consideration of Ground at present Granted unto them " ; an order that 
certain grantees pay each the sum of " one shilling and six pence as 
Damage, in case they do not Improve their Ground ... by preparing to 
fence, to plant, to build," etc.; an order that no landholder be permitted to 
" sell his field or his lot to [one merely] an Inhabitant, without consent of 
the Towne"; an order recognizing the existence of "common" timber 
land, and providing that "any timber felled by any person, being on the 
ground above a yeare after the felling, shall be at the towne's disposing " ; 
an order referring to the circumstance that at some prior date "Several 
portions of grasse and meadow " had been " Layd out in the Towne's name 
unto [certain persons], as their proper Right and Inheritance to them and 
theirs," and confirming certain later and similar dispositions of similar 
lands. 

^ Prov. Rec, vol. ii., p. 2. 



1 54 Early Rhode Islmid 

equal shares in both the Providence and Pawtuxet 
purchases. 

Now what the above-mentioned points signify 
is this : that the town fellowship or community 
of Providence, soon after its formation, became 
an institution first controlling, and next both con- 
trolling and owning, land. So long as Roger 
Williams kept in himself the title to the Providence 
and Pawtuxet tracts, the fellowship was merely a 
board of trustees for the management of his private 
property according to his ultimate behest ; but 
after the fellowship became possessed of equal 
shares in the property with Williams, it became a 
joint-stock land company capable of bidding defi- 
ance to its founder. The precise nature of the 
company's ownership is best expressed perhaps by 
the term "corporate." In other words, the title to 
all lands not granted to purchasers remained vested 
in the company as a single artificial entity, in it as 
a community. 

As to the nature of the title to such lands as 
were granted to purchasers, it may be said that, in 
so far as the latter took tracts in severalty, the 
title was in freehold ; and the most complete form 
of freehold, — " to them and theirs " ; that is, heri- 
table and not merely for life.^ Such purchasers, 

- The following may serve to make clearer the nature of freehold tenure 
in the New England settlements. 

The corporation of Massachusetts Bay held its lands from the Crown in 
" free and common socage." This was the least burdensome of all tenures, 
involving only fealty and the rendering of some definite service, or the 
payment of some definite rental. In the case of Massachusetts, i\iequid 
pro quo was the payment into the royal exchequer of the one-fifth part of 
the gold and silver ore found upon the company's lands. The company itself 



Providence and Aquidneck Land Systems 155 

however, as were permitted to become members of 
the fellowship, took each not only a freehold estate 
in the one hundred acres or thereabouts that, as 
we have seen in the last chapter, it was customary 
to set apart to a proprietor in severalty, but took also 
such an interest in the as yet undistributed part of 
the company's lands as was implied in the fact of 
being members of the company ; and this interest, 
I apprehend, was in strictness not that of a tenant 
in common, but rather that of a stockholder in a 
corporation ; in this instance, a land corporation. 

But, it may be asked, if the title to the lands 
held in severalty — the title to the five-acre house- 
lots, the six-acre arable fields, the shares of meadow, 
etc. — was in freehold, how came it that this title was 
subject to be forfeited upon breach of condition ? — 
forfeited, that is, if the lands were not improved or 
occupied within a certain time ; or if they were sold, 
without the town's consent, to one not an inhabi- 
tant ? The answer is that the restrictions above 
stated did not change the essential nature of free- 
hold title. At most, they merely so far modified 
the latter as to make it a determinable, instead of 
an absolute, estate. 

exacted nothing from its own grantees, when the latter were adventurers in 
the common stock. It was, however, at first proposed (1629) to exact from 
colonists, who were not shareholders, the performance of " Services, 
. . . on certain days of the year," in recognition of the tenure (free socage) 
by which such colonists held from the company, but this plan was not 
carried into effect. Freehold in Massachusetts, therefore, — and the same 
was true throughout New England, — was, with the exception of the early 
restrictions upon alienation noted in the text, the equivalent of allodial 
ownership. — Egleston's Latid System of the New England Colonies, pp. 
14, 19 ; Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England, vol. i., p. 
67. 



156 Early Rhode Island 

In brief, then, the town or fellowship of Prov- 
idence was practically, in its inception, an institution 
owning land as a communal body or corporation, in 
contradistinction to an association or partnership ^ ; 
and, furthermore, an institution that while granting 
lands in freehold to purchasers, granted a freehold 
which was determinable rather than absolute.^ 

It remains for us next to inquire regarding the 
outcome in government of the land system of 
Aquidneck. 

'Instances do occur (Prov. Rec, vol. ii., p. 15) in which the owners of 
stock in the Providence corporation sell their interest in the common lands 
instead of their stock as such, but the failure at times to discriminate be- 
tween stock and land was not very material. 

That the New England communities were essentially corporations, and 
not partnerships, is shown by the fact that the conveyances to settlers were 
invariably by the community in a corporate capacity, and through the duly 
elected community officers. Professor Andrews remarks {y. H. U. Studies, 
vii,, viii., ix., p. 66), that in Connecticut, "By later acts of the Gen- 
eral Court, the corporate nature of the proprietors was recognized. . . . 
This was merely legalizing custom." And it is the remark of Mr. Charles 
Francis Adams in his "Genesis of the Massachusetts Tov/n" {Alass. Hist. 
Soc. Proc, vol. vii., p. 196), that the inhabitants of the Massachusetts towns 
"were in the nature of stockholders in a modern corporation." 

"^ There are instances which by themselves might lead to the conclusion 
reached by Mr. Rider in his Hist. Tract No. ^ (2d Ser., pp. 11, 12), that 
the Providence land company did not make grants in freehold, but only for 
use and occupancy. Thus, at page 67 of vol. ii. of the Records of Provi- 
dence there is an order, dated December 7, 1652, giving Richard Pray "lib- 
erty to sell his house and fencing to any man whom the Town shall approve 
of, to dispose the lot unto " ; and at page 103, there is an order of date 
April 27, 1657, that "hen : Reddock shall have libertie to sell his Lot ac- 
cording to his Bill." But a turning of the pages of the volume makes it 
clear that the permission given to Pray and Reddock was merely an asser- 
tion in advance of the right of the community to guard against sales to 
outsiders, — a right usually enforced when the question of admitting the 
fact of a sale to record came before the town meeting. There are too 
many cases of conveyances to persons and their posterity, made both by the 
community and by individuals with the community's sanction, to negative 
the idea of " freehold" tenure. 



Providence and Aquidneck Land Systems 157 

Beginning with Portsmouth, the parent settle- 
ment, we note a series of evolutionary steps that 
corresponds closely with the Providence series. 
Thus, for the initial step, there is the formation on 
March 7, 1637-38, of the political society to oc- 
cupy Aquidneck, and, on March 24th, the actual 
purchase of the Island ; for a second step, the 
adoption on May 13, 1638, of the rule limiting 
inhabitants and freemen to such as the "Bodye" 
should admit ; for a next step, the assignment, on 
May 20th, of house-lots, mostly six acres in extent, 
to the proprietors ; for a further step, the order 
made in various forms between 1638 and 1639, 
that lands not improved within a twelvemonth 
should revert to the town, but that compensation 
should be made for labor expended toward im- 
provements ; and for a final step, the order of 
December 23, 1644, that "the right and privi- 
leges of the Lands undisposed of remains in the 
bodye of the freemen," that " the freemen which are 
the possessors have only power to dispose of the 
lande that is to be disposed of."^ 

Here once more we have the political commu- 
nity which is also the close land corporation, the 
extensive corporate or community ownership, and 
the conditional transfers of specific tracts. But in 
1639 Portsmouth in its orbit had thrown ofif New- 
port, and we look with interest to the latter com- 
munity to see if there be there presented any 
modification of the land system of the original set- 

' See R. I. Col. Eec, vol. i., " Town of Portsmouth," for instances cited in 
above paragraph. 



158 Early Rhode Island 

tlements. We find none, but perceive that the 
creation of Newport was clearly the cause of im- 
portant modifications in the land system of Aquid- 
neck, — that is, after Aquidneck came, in 1640, to 
consist of Newport added to Portsmouth. 

The system in question now was no longer one 
in which the political community and land com- 
pany were identical. Newport by coming into 
existence had converted the land company into 
two land companies^ — each charged, according to 
the New England method, with the management 
of its own local business — and at the same time had 
been the means of placing over each company a 
supervisory power consisting in the political com- 
munity of the whole Island, — in other words, in 
the personnel of both land companies. Nor was 
the political community long restricted even to 
this personnel, for, at the meeting which effected 
the union of the settlements, it was ordered that 
henceforth any man should be admitted as a free- 
man " in eyther plantation " who should be found 
" meet for the service." Indeed the promptness 
with which in 1640, and the years ensuing, Aquid- 
neck proceeded to disencumber itself of those re- 

•As showing the method of division, the following is of interest. On 
September 14, 1640, it was ordered by the Aquidneck Government, that 
whereas goo acres of land had, before the founding of Newport, been " layd 
forth unto Mr. William Hutchinson, Mr. Samuel Hutchinson, and Francis 
Hutchinson, on this side of the river called Sachuis River, next unto Nu- 
port, [the same] shall be and is still granted to them and their posterity, 
. . . provided they hold it as from the Town of Nuport ; . . . provided 
also, that if so be the said parties before mentioned shall refuse their, or 
any of their, accommodations before premised in that place, then the s'd 
Lande or Landes shall returne to the use and disposall of the said Town 
of Nuport." — R. I. Col. Jiec, vol. i., pp. 100, 109. 



Providence and Aquidneck Land Systejns 159 

straints which had characterized it during the 
period of its existence as essentially a land corpo- 
ration — and which continued to characterize Prov- 
idence down to 1 7 1 8 — is remarkable. For example, 
on May 6, 1640, the order requiring lands to be 
improved within one year, under penalty of for- 
feiture, was repealed so far as it affected house-lots, 
and in 1641 that far-reaching declaratory act was 
passed — already quoted at length in these pages — 
that " all men's Proprieties in their Lands of the 
Island . . . shall be such and soe free that neyther 
the state nor any Person shall intrude into it ; . . . 
and that this tenure and Propriety . . . shall be 
continued to him, or his ; or to whomsoever he 
shall assign it for ever." ^ 

' On September 19, 1642, it was ordered " that the Freemen of the 
Towne in their Towne meetings shall appoint the Juries for the Courts, 
and that they shall have powre as well to appoint the Inhabitants, as Free- 
men, for that service, by virtue of the Tenure and grant of their Lands 
which is freehold." — R. I. Col Rcc, vol. i., p. 124. 

It is significant of Aquidneck liberalism in land matters that, on May 
10, 16S4, it was enacted by the General Assembly of Rhode Island, that 
" all and singular the lands lying . . . undivided and common within the 
precincts [of Portsmouth and Newport] shall be deemed and taken to be 
the property of every freeman of the said towne, as such and their succes- 
sors, freemen of the said towne, for the time being. And that the freemen 
of the said town of Newport, have also liberty in their publick town meet- 
ings to grant and dispose of the said undivided lands, according to their 
usual custom." — R. I. Col. Rec, vol. iii., p. 155. (Compare Chapter X.) 

In fact the above statute was probably suggested by the case of Thomas 
Savage, which arose in 1680. Savage had been one of the original propri- 
etors of Aquidneck, but had subsequently returned to Boston. In the 
meanwhile the lands of the Island, in so far as they remained undivided, 
had been allowed to become the property of all the freemen. This was 
not to the liking of Savage, and, on August 25, 1680, he presented to the 
Rhode Island Government a claim to a one-eighteenth part of these lands, 
as an original proprietor. The claim was rejected by the Island towns, and 
Savage then petitioned the King for a commission to try the matter, but a 



i6o Early Rhode Island 

It is probable that the Coddington element on the 
Island is to be credited with the liberal economic 
policy there so soon adopted, for the close communal 
features exhibited in the Providence land system, 
and in that of Portsmouth before the Coddington 
secession, were just those with which men of 
the mercantile spirit and training of Coddington 
and his associates would have scant sympathy. It 
is not overlooked that in this supposition there is 
something almost paradoxical, for it will be remem- 
bered that in a politico-religious respect it was the 
Coddinofton element that was inclined to be illiberal 
and reactionary. Still that element had in it 
enoueh of the leaven of Antinomianism to save it 
from downright bigotry, and as time passed it grew 
perceptibly in grace. Finally, apropos of the 
Aquidneck liberalism in land matters, it is perhaps 
significant that it was not until 1642, and then only 
in view of the action of the Arnold coterie in sub- 
mitting their persons and their lands to the jurisdic- 
tion of Massachusetts, that the Island government 
followed that of Providence in prescribing that 
sales of lands should not be made to any outside 
jurisdiction or person. 

The immediate outcome in government, then, of 
the land system of Aquidneck differed materially 
from that of the land system of Providence ; for, 

hearing was never obtained. One can but remark the difference between 
the course pursued by Providence toward Verin, and that pursued by 
Aquidneck toward Savage. Providence was a close proprietary body, and, 
as late as 1675, recognized a claim by its long-absent member. Aquid- 
neck had ceased to be a body closely proprietary, and in 1680 refused rec- 
ognition to a technical proprietary claim. — Arnold's Htst. R. /., vol i., 
p. 462. 



Providence and Aquidneck Land Systems i6i 

while the Providence system exemplified the nar- 
rowness resulting from the unifying of the polit- 
ical with the proprietary community/ the system 
of Aquidneck exemplified the liberalism intro- 

' That control of the town lands which the Providence proprietors so 
long and successfully kept is revealed in a succession of acts and orders 
of which the following are examples : On May 14, 1660, the " seven 
mile line" (mentioned in Chapter XIV.) was run — a line marking ap- 
proximately the limit of settlement on the west {Prov. Rec, vol. ii., p. 

129). On January 27, 1663, the number of proprietors having reached 
loi, it was decided to admit no others (Prov. Pec, vol. iii., pp. 48, 49). 
On March 7, 1661, the lands lying without the seven-mile line were 
ordered divided, the "25 acre men" to receive each one-fourth purchase 
right {Ibid., pp. 18, 20). On February 12, 1665, a distribution of shares 
by lot was ordered, Roger Williams being given third choice {Ibid., 
p. 69). Previous to this, however (April 27, 1664), an order had been made 
establishing a line " three miles from the said [seven-mile] line eastwardly," 
and the allotment was now to be of lands lying between these lines 
as well as of lands lying " without " the seven-mile line. At the drawing, 
Williams, individualistic as ever, objected to the " prophaning of God's 
worship by casting lots," and held aloof. No further allotment was 

made until the spring of 1675, at which time (April 12) Joshua Verin 
— long non-resident, and a forfeiture of whose proprietary interest had 
nearly been declared — was recognized in the allotment. 

In 1684, lots were drawn for shares west of the seven-mile line, and this 
time Roger Williams participated, having second choice. Subsequently, 
other allotments were made, and as late as 1704 and 1705 the proprietors 
demonstrated their exclusiveness and their power by refusing facilities for 
the maintenance of an establishment for the supply of naval stores, and 
by denying lands to aspirants for residence and citizenship. In 1718, 
connection between the proprietors, or land company, and the other free- 
men was severed, — the former now opening books of their own, and choos- 
ing their own clerk. They nevertheless, between 1724 and 1753, were still 
potent. In the earlier year they divided among themselves virtually all the 
common lands then remaining, and this despite their own solemn resolve 
in 1685, that "' it is necessary for some lands perpetually to be & lie in 
common, near unto our Town, for the use and benefit of the inhabitants" ; 
while a little later (1744) they, as disclosed by their records {City Hall 
Papers, No. og68), negotiated vigorously with the Providence Town Coun- 
cil regarding such of their holdings as " the warehouse lots" and " thatch 
beds." Meetings were held in 1815 and 1823 and again in 1832, but none 
after the year last mentioned. Consult Dorr's " Proprietors of Provi- 
dence," P. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ix., and Staples's Annals. 



VOL. I. — II. 



1 62 Early Rhode Island 

duced by the subordinating of the latter com- 
munity to the former. In a word, the landholding 
New England Township, spoken of by Mr. Doyle, 
tended in the case of Providence (by reason of the 
distrust of delegated power there prevalent) to 
foster that political individualism to which, in the 
case of Aquidneck and of New England in general, 
it was opposed. 

Note. — It is the teaching of certain writers that the com- 
munal land systems of New England were a revival of the Ger- 
manic Mark. It, however, is open to question whether any such 
institution as the Mark of von Maurer and others ever existed 
even in Teutonic lands. There of course was no conscious 
imitation of any such institution by the settlers of New Eng- 
land when forming towns. The most that can with safety be 
said is that all peoples have in the course of their development 
passed through the clan stage — a stage characterized by a 
certain communism — and that traces of this perhaps survive. 
The effect of the clan life of the early Anglo-Saxons, therefore, 
may be detected in some features of the New England town, 
although it seems an even more tenable hypothesis that what 
the town reveals in its leading features is simply human 
arrangements as dictated by wilderness conditions. 

In this connection it may not be inappropriate to observe 
that a somewhat striking approximation to the Germanic 
Mark was made by the Swiss canton of Appenzell Inner- 
Rhoden, The organization of this canton prior to 15 13 was 
tribal : the tribes (Allemanic Rhoden) existed upon the 
basis of kinship, and possessed severally or in connection a 
variety of communal estates (I. B. Richman's Appenzell, 
1895). See Chapter X. of the text for some account of 
Appenzell in comparison with Rhode Island. 



Toleration for Freedom of Conscience in 
Rhode Island Conceded by the English 
Government, and Massachusetts 
Defeated in its Attempt to Ex- 
tinguish Rhode Island 
Heresy 



163 



CHAPTER VI 

ROGER WILLIAMS IN ENGLAND THE PATENT OF 

1644 AND DEATH OF MIANTONOMI 

WE now recur to the English trip of Roger 
WilHams. This lasted about fifteen 
months — from June, 1643, to Septem- 
ber, 1644 — a period marked in both New and 
Old England by events of the highest interest and 
importance. 

On May 19, 1643, — the eve of Williams's depart- 
ure, — the New England Confederation was formed. 
This consisted of the colonies of Massachusetts, 
Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, and in 
general terms had for its object the common secu- 
rity against the Indians. In the second of the 
articles of confederation, however, it was stated 
that the object was also the " preserving and prop- 
agating the truth and liberties of the gospel." Part 
of article three was directly aimed at the Narragan- 
sett settlements, for it provided "that no other 
jurisdiction shall hereafter be taken in as a distinct 
head or member of this confederation, nor shall any 
other, either plantation or jurisdiction, in present 
being and not already in combination or under the 

165 



1 66 Em'ly Rhode Island 

jurisdiction of any of these confederates, be re- 
ceived by any of them." In article six it was 
agreed that for the management of the business of 
the Confederation a board of commissioners should 
be appointed, consisting of two from each colony 
(" all in church fellowship with us "), any six of 
whom were to have full power, and that there 
should be held one meeting a year on the first 
Thursday in September. There also were provi- 
sions for extraordinary meetings, and in emergency 
for the granting of aid without meetings, upon the 
requisition of three magistrates ; nor was there 
failure to provide, in the case of enterprises 
wherein " God should bless our endeavors," for an 
equitable division of " spoils or whatever is gotten 
by conquest." ^ 

The New England Confederation having been 
thus duly constituted, it proceeded almost immedi- 
ately to carry out Puritan ideals by ordering (in 
September) the execution of Miantonomi — the 
proud colleague of Canonicus. But of this more 
anon. It is here merely desired to call attention to 
the execution, or rather judicial murder, in ques- 
tion, in order to associate with it another outrage 
by the Puritans during the same year (November), 
namely, the vicious assault upon Gorton and his 
company ; a performance not, like the execution of 
Miantonomi, directly chargeable to the new Confed- 
eration, but countenanced by it,^ and thoroughly in 
the spirit of the pronouncement in favor of " prop- 
agating the truth and liberties of the gospel " with 

' Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii. p.i. '^ Ibid., p. 10. 



The Patent of 1644 ^^7 

an eye upon the " division of the spoils," " should 
God bless our endeavors." 

Landing from his Dutch ship, Williams did not 
step into a scene of tranquillity in England, When 
he had quitted the land in 1630-31, Charles 
I. (angry at Parliament, which under the lead 
of the aged Coke — our traveller's patron — had 
forced upon him the Petition of Right) had begun 
his eleven years' administration without a Parlia- 
ment, and Laud was busy persecuting dissenters. 
Oliver Cromwell and his kinsman John Hampden 
had been members of the last House of Commons, 
but Williams had probably not heard much about 
them. Of Pym, Wentworth, and Sir John Eliot, 
then the conspicuous leaders, he had probably heard 
a great deal. Now lo ! the change ! Eliot had 
died in the Tower. Wentworth had apostatized, 
had been created Earl of Strafford, had been tried 
and sent to the block. Laud had been made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, had been deposed, and now 
in the Tower was awaiting the fate of Strafford. 

o 

Pym had revolutionized the English Constitution 
by concentrating all power in the hands of the 
Commons, Hampden had received his death- wound 
in Chalgrove field, while Oliver Cromwell, as 
colonel of a Parliamentarian troop of horse that 
always kept its formation, was coming every day 
more into the thouo-hts of men. As for Charles 
himself, forced in June, 1639, ^^ ^^^ pacification of 
Berwick by the Scots, driven in March, 1641, to 
summon the Long Parliament, foiled in January, 



1 68 Early Rhode Island 

1642, in his attempt to arrest the five members, he 
had in the year last named unfurled his standard at 
Nottingham, fought the indecisive engagement of 
Edgehill, and now, late in the summer of 1643, 
was watching his adversaries from Oxford and the 
north. 

These events were all exciting, and all no doubt 
of deep interest to Williams, but they were not the 
events then taking place upon English soil which 
interested him most. What, we may safely pre- 
sume, stirred him chiefly, upon his arrival in Lon- 
don, were two facts : first, that in Parliament a 
little band of members, — Independents they were 
called, — consisting of Sir Henry Vane, Oliver 
Cromwell, Oliver St. John, and Sir Arthur Hasle- 
rig, were standing out, in the debates upon re- 
ligion, for a Toleration ; and second, that in the 
Westminster Assembly of divines which had been 
summoned to aid Parliament upon the religious 
question, and was holding its sessions amid the royal 
efifigies of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, another 
little band of Independents, consisting of Thomas 
Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, Philip Nye, Jeremiah 
Burrows, and William Bridge, all lately returned 
from Holland, were likewise standing out for a 
Toleration.^ Indeed, as it chanced, the apostle of 

' In 1643-44 the Independents issued a statement of their views, called the 
Apologeticall Narration. To this a reply soon appeared, entitled Observa- 
tions and Annotations upon the Apologeticall Narration, which by its style 
strongly suggests the author of the Gangrcsna. The following extract 
(p. 64), is not without point : " Yea, your New England men . . . toler- 
ated not their brethren who did hazard their lives in that voyage but made 
them go again ... to seek out some new Habitations in strange Coun- 
treyes yea in strange wildernesses ; yea they would not so much ... as 



The Patejit of i6^^ 169 

Toleration, fresh from his twelve years' task of 
domesticating the time-spirit in the new world, had 
come back at the precise juncture when this spirit 
was agitating most violently the mind of the 
mother country, and was to contribute to that agi- 
tation the strongest of the appeals made on the 
side of the Independents, to wit. The Bloody. 
Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Dis- 
cussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace. 
" I regard," says Professor Masson, " the arrival 
of Roger Williams in London, about mid-summer 
1643, as the importation into England of the very 
quintessence or last distillation of that notion of 
church independency which England had origina- 
ted, but Holland and America had worked out." 

Williams was in truth the representative of the 
last distillation of the notion of church independ- 
ency. The five Independent clergy of the West- 
minster Assembly were as nothing to him. They 
would have been content with a little practical 
Toleration fringing the edges of a Presbyterian 
national establishment, provided always the same 
were restricted to Christians who were Protestants ; 
whereas Williams not only advocated a Toleration 
that was, in matters of mere belief, all comprehen- 
sive, but stood at the moment before Parliament 

receive some men otherwise approved by themselves to live in any corner 
of New England ; . . . and that merely because they differed a little from 
them in point of Discipline. How then can our Brethren of that profession 
be Suitors for a Toleration in Old England . . . when as those of their 
profession refused it to those of New England in time of great persecution. 
Is it not to be feared that if they had the upper hand over us here they 
should send us all to some Isle of Dogs as they have done others? " — ^J. Car- 
ter Brown Library. 



1 70 Early Rhode Island 

as a petitioner (duly accredited) for the recognition 
of a group of British settlements in which what he 
advocated was carried out in practice, — places 
where Toleration had reached such a point of dis- 
tillation that Church was wholly separate from 
State, and Jews and Atheists even were not dis- 
criminated ao-ainst. But of course Williams's Tol- 
eration was a plant which had virgin soil into 
which to strike its roots, while that of the live 
clergy was forced to extract what nourishment it 
could from ground already well-nigh pre-empted by 
other orrowths. 

The men of light and leading in England at this 
time who came nearest the point of view of Wil- 
liams were Sir Henry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, and 
John Milton. Of these three Vane had had the 
best opportunity for acquiring advanced views, or 
for confirming the advanced views which he al- 
ready entertained. His Antinomian experience in 
Massachusetts must have been highly educative. 
It is said that he was the only man admitted to the 
esoteric conversazioni of Mistress Hutchinson, and 
we know that after the latter was thrown over by 
the politic Cotton she found great consolation in 
Vane. Thus Williams writes to Winthrop on 
April 16, 1638: "I find their [the Antinomian 
refugees'] longings great after Mr. Vane, al- 
though they think he cannot return this year : the 
eyes of some are so earnestly fixed upon him that 
Mistress Hutchinson professeth if he come not to 
New, she must to Old England." But Vane re- 



The Patent of 16^4 171 

turned never again to gladden the heart of her 
whom Masson describes in her exile as " this 
woman from Lincolnshire with wrinkles round 
her eloquent eyes," and on August 8, 1643, — about 
the time of our traveller's debarkation, — Sir Henry- 
was among the Scots, doing what he could to 
soften the rigorous terms of the religious covenant 
which Pym was forced to conclude with that peo- 
ple in return for the loan of an army wherewith to 
subdue the King. 

As for Cromwell, he was a man on the Tolera- 
tion question well up to the Roger Williams stand- 
ard. As early as April, 1643, Robert Baillie called 
him "the great Independent" ; and well he might, 
for only the month before, Cromwell had written 
to Major-General Lawrence Crawford, who had 
cashiered one of his captains because he was 
thought to be an Anabaptist : 

" Sir, the State in choosing men to serve it takes no notice 
of their opinions ; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that 
satisfies. . . . Take heed of being sharp, or too easily sharpened 
by others, against those to whom you can object little but that 
they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters 
of religion," — 

words that would have electrified the soul of Wil- 
liams, could he have seen them. 

John Milton, the last named of our three leaders, 
was last also in appreciation of the great principle 
of which Williams was the representative. He 
had, it is true, for two years been an open Anti- 
Prelatist, and now (August, 1643) was about to 
take a step that would cause him to be classed 



1 72 Early Rhode Island 

along with the FamiHsts, Anabaptists, Mortalists, 
and others, as a dangerous schismatic and secta- 
rian, but for all that he favored Toleration only for 
good Protestants. The step in question — thus 
about to be taken by Milton upon the approximate 
date of our traveller's arrival in London — was the 
publication of the Tract on Divorce, a treatise advo- 
cating divorce for mere incompatibility of tastes and 
temper, and which so far alienated from its author 
the mind of orthodox England as to make him the 
more accessible to men of the class of Roofer Wil- 
liams ; a circumstance which leads Masson to the 
conclusion that Williams now began that acquaint- 
ance with Milton which is known to have existed 
throughout the long period of his second sojourn 
in England (1651-54). 

Be that as it may, our traveller — the agent of 
Providence and Aquidneck — knew Vane, and 
through Vane had the ear of Cromwell, and that 
was ample for his mission. This mission was 
primarily, and on its practical side, to procure a 
patent for the new colony erected out of the Nar- 
ragansett settlements ; but in a secondary way it 
was, as already intimated, much broader. Thus, 
secondarily, it involved at least three distinct tasks : 
first, the publication of Williams's book written on 
shipboard, — The Key into the Language of Amer- 
ica ; second, the enlistment of interest in the sect 
called Seekers, — a sect so completely embodying 
the notion of church independency as to be no 
church at all, but the antecedent elements or atoms 
of one, seeking a principle of cohesion ; and third, 



The Patent of 1644 i ^'^ 

the writing and publication of the Bloody Te?iet of 
Persecution, — a formal vindication and justification 
of the one commonwealth in the world exemplifying 
the ideas which Vane, Cromwell, and Milton, and 
in lesser degree the five Independent clergy of the 
Westminster Assembly, were urging upon the 
minds and consciences of Englishmen. 

The publication of the Key was soon arranged 
with a London bookseller, Gregory Dexter, who 
later on himself emigrated to Rhode Island, and 
before the end of 1643 the book was out. It was 
upon the new and fascinating theme of the speech, 
manners, and morals of the American Indian, and 
attracted much attention, winning commendation 
from the Board of Trade, and forming a substantial 
basis — in the details which it gave concerning the 
Narragansetts and their country — for the applica- 
tion for a patent. It was slower work creating an 
interest in Seekerism ; but our traveller went reso- 
lutely at it, and by the summer of 1644 we find 
Robert Baillie, who was a member of the West- 
minster Assembly and who had come personally to 
know Williams, writing: "The Independents are 
divided among themselves. One Mr. Williams has 
drawn a great number after him to a singular inde- 
pendency, denying any true church in the world, 
and will have every man serve God by himself 
alone." And later Baillie again writes : " Sundry 
of the Independents are stepped out of the church 
and follow my good acquaintance Mr. Roger Wil- 
liams, who says there is no church, no sacraments, 



1 74 Early Rhode Island 

no pastors, no church officers or ordinance in the 
world, nor has been since a few years after the 
apostles." 

These allusions, by so competent a theologian as 
Baillie, to our traveller as a founder of the Seekers 
would seem to make it almost certain that such he 
was ; and the testimony of Baillie is supplemented 
by that of Richard Baxter.^ But whether he were 
or no, all will recognize a pretty correct description 
of Williams's theological attitude, from 1640 to the 
end, in the following by " Old Ephraim Paget " : 
" Many have wrangled so long about the Church 
that at last they have quite lost it, and go under 
the name of Expecters and Seekers ; . . . some 
of them affirm the Church to be in the wilderness, 
and they are seeking for it there ; others say that it 
is in the smoke of the Temple, and that they are 
groping for it there, — where I leave them praying 

' Baillie's Letters, vol. ii.; Reliq. Baxteriance, Part I., page 76. "The 
great Mr. Baxter calls him [R. W.] the father of the Seekers in London " 
(Backus, vol. i., p. 509). 

Barclay, in his Inner Life of the Religious Sects of the Contfnonwealth 
(p. 140), states that the views of the Seekers have been traced to the time 
of the Reformation. These views he regards as having originated in Hol- 
land among the Anabaptists, and quotes Sebastian Franck's Chronica 
(1536) p. CC, Part III., to the effect that some desire to allow Baptism and 
other ceremonies to remain in abeyance till God gives another command, 
thinking the ceremonies since the death of the Apostles to be equally de- 
filed, laid waste, and fallen. But so far as England is concerned, the 
presence of Seekerism seems first to have been noted by John Murton in 
161 7. The latter says : " O ye Seekers, I would ye sought aright and 
not beyond the scriptures calling it carnal" {Truth'' s Champion, 3d ed. 
p. 154.) A prominent English Seeker of a decade later than 1643-44 (the 
time of Williams's visit) was John Jackson. Jackson named three classes 
of Seekers, (i) those against all ordinances, (2) those who see not sufficient 
ground for the present practice of ordinances, and (3) those above and be- 
yond all ordinances. 



The Patent of j6^^ 1 75 

to God." And what is more, there seems to have 
been something about Seekerism that strongly at- 
tracted even Cromwell, for, in 1646 we find him 
writing to his daughter, Mrs. Ireton : " And thus 
to be a Seeker is to be of the best sect next after a 
Finder ; and such an one shall every faithful, hum- 
ble Seeker be in the end. Happy Seeker, happy 
Finder." In a word, Seekerism was an ism pe- 
culiarly grateful to the taste of the ultra-Tolera- 
tionists of the time. It was not only that last 
distillation of the notion of church independency, 
spoken of by Professor Masson, and already men- 
tioned as "involving the complete separation of 
Church and State, " but more. It was such a distilla- 
tion of Independency as involved the extinction of 
the formal church. 

As for the Bloody Tenet, published just before 
our traveller's departure for America, it was a re- 
markable performance, and one accomplished under 
the pressure and distraction of a thousand untoward 
circumstances. The chief requisite for any piece 
of literature is that it be live, that it come glowing 
from the brain ; fulfilling which, a host of minor 
imperfections are as nothing ; and that the Bloody 
Tenet does fulfil this requisite, is beyond ques- 
tion. It stands at the threshold of American 
history as a beacon light, sustaining to that history 
on the moral side a relation like that which the 
Federalist (also a beacon light) sustains on the 
side more purely intellectual. And both were hur- 
ried books. The tide of the times did not tarry for 
either, but each bravely took the tide at its flood. 



1 76 Early Rhode Island 

"■ These meditations," says Williams in a familiar 
passage, referring to the Bloody Tenet, " were fit. 
ted for public view in change of rooms and corners, 
yea, sometimes in variety of strange houses, some- 
times in the fields, in the midst of travel where (the 
author) hath been forced to gather and scatter his 
loose thoughts and papers." 

Indeed, by the help of hints like these we may 
actually see our traveller in the midst of his labors 
and distractions : now of a morning plying the pen 
in his lodgings near St. Martin's in the Fields, now 
of an afternoon pausing in the lobby of St. Stephen's 
to talk with Baillie or Nye on their way to the 
Westminster Assembly housed (for it is winter) in 
the Jerusalem Chamber; now at Whitehall or in 
Fleet Street with Vane ; now at the printer's ; now 
in the country collecting fuel for the London poor, 
whose supply of coal from Newcastle has been 
cut off by the deep snows; now of an evening — 
Sunday evening perchance — in Milton's rooms in 
Aldersgate Street (all too silent after the recent 
wedding gayeties) listening to the author of Lycidas 
as he expounds the Greek Testament to his pupils.^ 

' But the fitting for public view of our traveller's meditations (thus broken 
in upon) having been accomplished, let the result, in epitome, speak for 
itself. 

"In vi^hat dark corner of the world, sweet Peace, are we two met?" 
asks, at the outset of the book, the allegorical personage Truth. " How 
hath this present world banished me from all the coasts and corners of it ! 
And how hath the righteous God in judgment taken thee from the earth ! " 
" It is lamentably true, blessed Truth " (Peace replies) : " the foundations 
of the world have long been out of course ; the gates of Earth and Hell 
have conspired together to intercept our joyful meeting and our holy kisses. 
With what wearied, tired wing have I flown over nations, kingdoms, cities, 
towns to find out precious Truth." And so a dialogue between Truth and 



The Patent of 1644 i77 

Nor was the Bloody Tenet by any means the only 
word contributed by WilHams concerning Tolera- 
tion during his first stay abroad. Shortly after his 
arrival in London, he found in print that letter of 
John Cotton's referred to in our first chapter, and 
to this he published (1644) the reply already 
noticed, — Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and An- 
swered. Then, following upon the answer to Cot- 
ton, came a pamphlet addressed to Parliament 
under the title of Queries of the Highest Consider- 
ation. " Most renowned patriots," says the intro- 
duction, " you sit at helm in as great a storm as e'er 
poor England's Commonwealth was lost in ; yet be 
you pleased to remember, that excepting the affairs 
of religion ... all your consultations, 
conclusions, executions are not of the quantity of 

Peace begins, in the progress of which through some four hundred pages 
tlie fundamental principle is established that "A permission of the most 
Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, and Antichristian consciences and worships 
should be granted to all men, in all nations and countries." Then come 
these concluding words : 

Peace. " We have now, dear Truth, through the gracious hand of God, 
clambered up to the top of this our tedious discourse." 

Truth. " O, 't is mercy unexpressible that either thou or I have had so 
long a breathing time and that together." 

Peace. " If English ground must yet be drunk with English blood, O, 
where shall Peace repose her wearied head and heavy heart ? " 

Truth. " Dear Peace, if thou find welcome and the God of peace mi- 
raculously please to quench these all-devouring flames, yet where shall 
Truth find rest from cruel persecutions ? " 

Peace. " But lo ! Who 's here ? " 

Truth. "Our sister Patience, whose desired company is as needful as 
delightful. . . . Ttie God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly 
seal this truth . . . and make it evident to the whole world, that the 
Doctrine of Persecution for Cause of Conscience is most evidently and 
lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace, 
Amen." 



I j^ Early Rhode Island 

the value of one poor drop of water " ; and then 
are propounded the queries — twelve in number — 
each cogent, and collectively exhaustive of the prin- 
ciples underlying the doctrine of Soul Liberty. 

At the same time that Williams was seeking in 
England to induce the acceptance of the Toleration 
idea, he was pursuing his special task of providing 
for the confirmation and perpetuation of this idea 
in far-away Providence and Aquidneck, where ac- 
ceptance had already been secured. 

On November 2, 1643, ^^ committee of the 
Privy Council, called the Lords of Trade, which 
heretofore had had the management of the British 
colonies, was superseded by a Parliamentary 
Commission consisting of five peers and twelve 
commoners, with Robert, Earl of Warwick, as 
Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral. Pym, 
Vane, and Cromwell were among the members, and 
through them Williams made his application for a 
patent. The application was successful, and on 
March 14, 1643-44, the instrument was issued. It 
recited that, whereas 

" there [was] a tract of land in the continent of America, called 
by the name of the Narragansett Bay, bordering North and 
North East on the Patent of the Massachusetts, East and South 
East on Plymouth Patent, South on the Ocean, and on the 
West and North West inhabited by the Indians called 
Narragansetts, the whole tract extending about twenty and 
seven English miles unto the Pequod River and country ; and 
that, whereas divers well-affected and industrious English, 
inhabitants of the towns of Providence, Portsmouth, and 
Newport in the tract aforesaid, [had] adventured to make a 



The Patent of 1644 1 79 

nearer neighborhood to, and society with, the great body of 
the Narragansetts, which [might] in time, by the blessing of 
God upon their endeavor, lay a surer foundation of happiness 
to all America, . . . the said Robert Earl of Warwick, 
and the greater number of the said Commissioners, gave, 
granted, and confirmed unto the aforesaid inhabitants of 
Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport a full and absolute 
Charter of Civill Incorporation, to be known by the name of 
the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narragan- 
sett Bay in New England." 

It was furthermore provided, that the inhabitants 
should have 

" full power and authority to govern and rule themselves 
. by such a form of civil government as by voluntary 
consent of all, or the greater part of them, they should find 
most servicable in their estate and condition ; . . . the 
laws, constitutions, and punishments for the civil government 
of the said plantation to be conformable to the laws of 
England, so far as the nature and constitution of the place 
would admit." ' 

In seeking the patent above described, our trav- 
eller and agent was conscious of no opposition. 
Everything went smoothly, and to all indications 
the result was a triumph without alloy. But the 
indications were deceptive. Massachusetts was not 
so easily to be escaped. When we last saw the Rev. 
Hugh Peters and the Rev. Thomas Welde, they had 

' R. I. Hist. Coll., vol ii., p. 259. 

Surprise has often been expressed that the patent contained no express 
grant of Soul Liberty. It should, however, be remembered that at the 
time when the patent was issued, Soul Liberty, or Toleration, in England 
was the theme of hot political and ecclesiastical debate. A few were for it, 
both in Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly, but the majority 
were against it. It is evident, therefore, that in any instrument that must 
pass the scrutiny of a Parliamentary board the less said about Soul Liberty 
the better. 



i8o Early Rhode Island 

just participated in the congenial task of sending 
forth into the wilderness Mistress Anne Hutchinson. 
They were both now in London, and had been 
since the autumn of 1641, as the representatives of 
the Bay Commonwealth. Winthrop records that 
they were sent " to congratulate the happy success 
[of the Parliament in England]," to explain to " our 
creditors . . . why we could not make so cur- 
rent payment as in former years," and " to make 
use of any opportunity God should offer for the 
good of the country here." But whatever their 
instructions, express or implied, the representa- 
tives themselves (particularly Welde) conceived 
that it manifestly fell within these instructions to 
thwart the efforts which that audacious heretic and 
abettor of Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, was 
known to be putting forth by the help of that other 
heretic. Sir Henry Vane, to procure a patent of 
incorporation for that nest of heretics, the Narra- 
gansett settlements. 

So Welde set to work, and sometime during 
November and December, 1643, obtained the 
signatures of nine of the Parliamentary com- 
missioners to a document since known as the 
Narragansett Patent, whereby there was added 
to the " bounds and limits " of Massachusetts the 
"tract of land . . . called the Narragansett 
Bay in America." The signature of neither Vane 
nor Cromwell was obtained, for both these com- 
missioners were the friends of Williams and of 
Toleration, and were at the time no doubt exerting 
themselves in Williams's behalf. Indeed there is 



The Patent of J 6^^ i8i 

every reason to think that it was the efforts of 
Vane, supervening, that nipped the project of 
Welde in the bud ; for the Narragansett Patent 
is signed by only a moiety of the commissioners 
(a majority being required to give validity),^ and 
bears other evidences of having been left in a state 
of incompletion.^ Nor in all this is there anything 
to create surprise. It was natural that Welde 
should attempt to frustrate the plans of Williams 

' Mr. Charles Deane argues that a majority of the commissioners were 
not required to sign a patent of incorporation for a plantation. But upon 
that point the language of the ordinance creating the Board of Commis- 
sioners would seem to be conclusive. See the ordinance, R. I. Hist. Coll.y 
vol. ii., p. 250, and Mr. Aspinwall's remarks, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, June, 
1862. 

"^ The Narragansett Patent bears date December 10, 1643, which was 
Sunday, — a day upon which it is quite inconceivable that a Puritan body 
would perform the secular work of issuing a patent. 

There are further circumstances tending to prove that the Narragansett 
Patent was never regularly issued, as for instance the statement of the 
Lord President Warwick in the hearing of Samuel Gorton, that the instrument 
"had never past the table " {Narr. Club Pub. vol. vi., p. 341) ; the statement 
of William Brenton to Hutchinson, the Massachusetts agent, in 1662, that 
" there was no such thing upon record in any court of England, for he had 
sent to search the records," etc. — Bryant and Gay's Hist. U. S., vol. ii., 
p. 102. 

Mr. S. S. Rider calls attention to the fact {Book Notes, vol. viii., p. 196) 
that the name of John Pym is omitted from the list of commissioners 
as recited in the Narragansett Patent, thus making the whole number of com- 
missioners seventeen instead of eighteen ; the apparent intention being to give 
the impression that the patent, signed as it was by nine commissioners, 
complied with the requirement in respect to the signatures of a majority. To 
this, however, it should be added that at the date of the Narragansett Patent 
(December 10, 1643) John Pym was lying dead, having expired at Derby 
House on December 8th. The fact that his name was allowed to appear in 
the patent for Providence Plantations, issued later on, was immaterial, as 
that patent bore eleven signatures; but in the case of the Narragansett Patent, 
which bore only nine signatures, it may have been considered material that 
the name of a deceased commissioner should not be recited in the 
instrument. 



1 82 Early Rhode Island 

and Vane, and furthermore it was natural that in 
this attempt he should fall short. But there are 
later developments in connection with the matter 
that do create surprise. 

In the summer of 1645, more than a year and a 
half subsequent to the date of the Narragansett 
Patent, Welde (who seems all along to have had 
possession of the document) sent it to Massachu- 
setts, and it was made the basis of a notification to 
Providence Plantations, through Roger Williams, 
to cease the exercise of all jurisdiction in the Nar- 
ragansett country.^ Now, in the first place, why 
did Welde send the void patent ? and secondly, why 
did Massachusetts put forth any claim under it ? 
These questions admit perhaps of no positive an- 
swers, but Mr. Thomas Aspinwall, in his Remarks 
on the Narragansett Patent, printed in 1862, has 
made some suggestions toward answers that are at 
least worthy of serious consideration. It is the 
opinion of Mr. Aspinwall that Welde, taken to task 
by the Massachusetts authorities for having per- 
mitted himself to be outmanoeuvred by Williams in 
securing control of the Narragansett country, sent 
home "this abortive Patent, not perhaps to be used 
as a legal instrument (for he knew its imperfections), 
but to prove that he had not been idle, and had 
nearly succeeded in his efforts " to head off his rival. 
In support of this opinion, Mr. Aspinwall is able to 
quote from Winthrop expressions showing that 
both Welde and Peters were in disfavor for what 
was considered their neglect of Massachusetts in- 

^ Mass. Col. Rec, vol. iii., p. 49. 



The Patent of 1644 1 83 

terests in England, and to quote from the General 
Court a crowning expression of dissatisfaction in 
the vote (recorded in October, 1645, just after the 
arrival of the patent in question), that Mr. Peters 
and Mr. Welde " having been long absent, may- 
understand the Court's mind that they desire their 
presence here and speedy return." ^ The act of 
Massachusetts, therefore, in notifying Rhode Island 
(or Providence Plantations as it then was) of the 
existence of the Narragansett Patent was in com- 
mon parlance a mere bluff ; and as such, and a 
failure besides, was not repeated. 

As for Welde and Peters, both, despite the press- 
ing invitation of their colony to do otherwise, con- 
tinued to reside abroad. Peters in due time became 
chaplain to Cromwell, in which capacity it fell to 
him, in Milton's company, to follow the bier of the 
Protector to its resting place in Westminister 
Abbey. His own end was tragic, for, upon the 
restoration of the monarchy, he suffered death as 
one of the proscribed. Welde in 1644, probably 
while Williams was still in England, w^as the means 
(at the instigation of the shrewd Baillie, it is thought) 
of bringing to light Winthrop's pamphlet, Aiitinom- 
ians and Familists, introduced by Welde himself in 
the inimitable " Preface," and altogether calculated 
to give great satisfaction to the Presbyterians as ex- 
hibiting the New England way — reputed a way of 
Toleration — in its true aspect of mercilessness and 
persecution. Welde's death was peaceful and oc- 
curred about 1662. 

' Mr, Aspinwall's Reinarks on the Narr. Patent, p. 27. 



184 Early Rhode Island 

As the mission of Roger Williams drew to its 
close, — a mission which besides the securing of the 
patent had involved the publication of one book, the 
writing and publication of another book and of two 
lengthy pamphlets, and constant labors throughout 
an entire winter for the poor of London, — the prin- 
ciple of Toleration was destined to make one more 
forward stride by the victory of Marston Moor ; 
that victory, the bloodiest in the English civil war, 
which gained for Oliver Cromwell what Mr. John 
Morley well terms " the brave nickname of Iron- 
side." But it is incumbent upon us now — leaving 
for a season Williams and his companions, Vane, 
Cromwell, Milton, even canny, intolerant old Robert 
Baillie — to recur to the first of those two remark- 
able occurrences which marked in New England 
the period of our traveller's absence, — I mean the 
execution of Miantonomi. 

This great sachem of the Narragansetts — the 
nephew and colleague of Canonicus — fell a victim 
to circumstances, the first of which was the enmity 
of Uncas and the Mohegans ; the second, a fear on 
the part of New Haven, Connecticut, and Plymouth 
of a Narragansett conspiracy against all the settle- 
ments ; the third, the enmity of Massachusetts 
induced by Miantonomi's friendliness toward Gor- 
ton and his company ; and the fourth, the absence 
from the country of Roger Williams. It has al-ready 
been mentioned that one result of the Pequod War 
was the placing of Uncas in rivalry with Mian- 
tonomi for the favor of the English, and that this 



Death of Mia7itonomi 185 

rivalry was the cause of much vexation for WilHams 
up to the time of his departure to procure the 
patent. The burden of the accusations bandied 
between the Narragansetts and Mohegans was that 
faith with the colonies was not kept regarding the 
surrender of Pequod captives. A meeting between 
Miantonomi and Uncas was therefore arranged 
by Williams and the Connecticut authorities to 
take place at Hartford, at which it was hoped the 
difference might be adjusted. The result of this 
meeting was a treaty, signed September 21, 1638, 
providing for future peace on the basis of an appeal 
to the English in all disputed matters, and provid- 
ing further and especially that the Pequod prisoners 
on hand (excepting such as had murdered English- 
men) should be divided between the claimants. As 
however may be imagined, the conclusion of the 
treaty did not much improve the relations between 
the high contracting parties. Both merely bided 
their time for revenge. 

Massachusetts had taken no particular part in the 
Miantonomi-Uncas difficulty, and, despite some 
slight misunderstandings, kept on good terms with 
the former down to the spring of 1643. The truth 
is that both Canonicus and his colleague had come 
to value their alliance with the Bay Commonwealth, 
and were ready to make many sacrifices of pride 
and wampum to maintain it. The case is put with 
even a touch of pathos by Williams in one of his 
letters : 

" I perceive by these your last thoughts," he says to Winthrop, 
"that you have received many accusations and hard conceits 



1 86 Early Rhode Island 

of this poor native Miantunnomu, wherein I see the vain and 
empty puff of all terrene promotions, his barbarous birth or 
greatness being much honored, confirmed and augmented (in 
his own conceit) by the solemnity of his league with the Eng- 
lish, and his more than ordinary entertainment «Scc., now all 
dashed in a moment in the frowns of such in whose friendship 
and love lay his chief advancement." 

As early as 1640, Miantonomi was called upon 
to pass beneath the frown of Massachusetts, upon 
word from Plymouth and Connecticut that he had 
*' sent a great present of wampum to the Mohawks 
to aid him apfainst the English " ; but from this 
evidently groundless charge he easily vindicated 
himself. In the autumn of 1642, Massachusetts 
again frowned — this time, too, upon a seemingly 
grave occasion. Miantonomi was deliberately and 
circumstantially accused, and from quarters as 
widely separate as Plymouth and the Manhattoes, 
of conspiring to destroy all the settlers and settle- 
ments of New England and the Dutch.^ Connec- 
ticut, New Haven, and Plymouth believed the 
charges to be well founded. The settlers of these 
colonies, still bearing in vivid recollection the massa- 
cres perpetrated by the Pequods five years before, 
and wrought upon by the reiterated fears and fancies 
of the Mohegans, were credulous. " During the 
watches of the night, the trembling inmates of the 
border cottages listened with apprehension to every 
sound, and peered through their carefully closed 

'Regarding the so-called conspiracy, see Winthrop, vol. ii., pp. 78-84; 
Palfrey's New Eng., vol. ii., pp. 114, 115 and notes ; Hazard's State Papers, 
vol. ii., p. 8 et seq. and p. 45 et seq.; Gardiner's Pcquot Warres ; Mass. 
Hist. Coll., 3d ser., vol. iii. 



Death of Miaritonomi 187 

shutters into the darkness of the surrounding forest 
dreading each moment to see the stealthy steps 
and fantastic trappings of the Narragansett and 
Mohawk warriors." ^ 

The course taken by Massachusetts in the 
fancied emergency was to disarm the natives in the 
vicinity of Boston, and to summon Miantonomi to 
clear himself. The latter promptly appeared, ac- 
companied by two or three witnesses, and demanded 
to be confronted with his accusers, " to the end," 
Winthrop says, " that if they could not make good 
what they had charged him with, they might suffer 
what he was worthy of, and must have expected, if 
he had been found guilty, viz. death." The inter- 
view as conducted could not have been otherwise 
than impressive. At one end of a long table sat 
Governor Winthrop, surrounded by his council in 
the modified Elizabethan garb of the period, a 
stately Puritan group ; and opposite, forming a 
group no less stately, sat with his attendants the 
proud colleague of Canonicus, tall, stern of aspect, 
his togaed covering not so closely drawn as wholly 
to conceal the glowing copper breast and powerful 
arm. " In all his answers," too, Miantonomi is 
acknowledged by the Puritan Governor to have 

' In this connection it is well to remember that a somewhat similar panic 
was induced among the Narragansetts themselves by the murder, in the 
summer of 1638, of an Indian by four Englishmen within a few miles of 
Providence. " Sir," wrote Williams to Governor Winthrop on that occa- 
sion, "there hath been a great hubbub in all these parts, by reason of a 
murder committed upon a native by four desperate English four days 
since. I went myself with two or three more to the wounded in the 
woods. The natives at first were shy of us, conceiving a general slaughter." 
— Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. in. 



1 88 Early Rhode Island 

been "very deliberate," to have shown "good under- 
standing in the principles of justice and equity, and 
ingenuity withal," and to have "accommodated 
himself to us to our satisfaction." ^ Thus stood the 
case in September, 1642. The frowning brow of 
Massachusetts had relaxed. 

But in the following January and May (1643), 
events took place which caused the Puritan Com- 
monwealth to view Miantonomi in a new light. 
Not that anything had happened in the meanwhile 
to discredit his protestations of innocency as regards 
the charge of conspiring against the English and 
the Dutch : he had kept his treaty obligations ; his 
whole political course had been exemplary. But in 
January he sold Shawomet to Samuel Gorton and 
his company, and in May the local sachems of this 
region, Pumham and Sacononoco, acting through 
the Arnold coterie, — a story to be told in our next 
chapter, — were seeking to escape the consequences 
of the sale by creeping under the same shelter 
which Massachusetts had extended above the 
Arnolds in relation to Pawtuxet. In other words, 
Miantonomi was now affiliating with Samuel 
Gorton, and Gorton was — to employ the forthright 
language of Winthrop, Winslow, Morton, and 
others of the elect — an " arch heretic," " a beast," 
" a miscreant," " a proud and pestilent seducer," 
" a man whose spirit was stark drunk with blas- 
phemies and insolences." Miantonomi, therefore, 
was again summoned to Boston ; this time to show 
cause why his pretensions as to Shawomet should 

' Winthrop, ii., 82, 



Death of Miantonomi 189 

not be set one side. The sachem patiently came, 
and no doubt explained what had never before 
been questioned : that the lesser sachems of the 
Narragansett country were all tributary to Ca- 
nonicus and himself as lords paramount.^ But, 
says Winthrop, " Miantonomi being demanded in 
open Court, before divers of his own men and 
Cutshamekin and other Indians, whether he had 
any interest in the said two Sachems as his subjects, 
he could prove none."^ 

Returning from his attendance on the court in 
Boston, our perplexed sachem found that trouble 
had arisen between one of his tributaries, Sequasson, 
and Uncas. Sequasson, it seems, had killed some 
of the Mohegans. Uncas then had attacked 
Sequasson, and — always redoubtable in fight — 
had handled him severely. This drew forth a 
complaint to Connecticut from Miantonomi, to 
whom the answer given was that " the English had 
no hand in [the affair]." Miantonomi next turned 
to Massachusetts, " and," as Winthrop records, 
" was very desirous to know if we would not be 
offended if he made war upon Onkus." " Our 



' Roger Williams bears testimony to the supreme authority of Miantonomi 
in these words: " I humbly offer that what was done [the selling of Shaw- 
omet to Gorton] was according to the law and tenor of the natives (I take 
it) in all New England and America, viz., that the inferior Sachems and 
subjects shall plant and remove at the pleasure of the highest and supreme 
Sachems, and I humbly conceive that it pleaseth the Most High and Only 
Wise to make use of such a bond of authority over them without 
which they could not long subsist in human society, in this wild condition 
in which they are." — Letter to Mass., May 12, 1656, R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., 
p. 342. 

'Winthrop, ii., 120, 



190 Early Rhode Island 

Governor answered," continues the record, " if 
Onkus had done him or his friends wrong, and 
would not give satisfaction, we should leave him to 
take his own course." 

Provided with carte blanche by both Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut, Miantonomi in July, 1643, 
suddenly made a descent with several hundred 
warriors — nearly one thousand, it is said — upon 
Uncas. The latter knew nothing of the approach 
of the Narragansetts till they had crossed the 
Yantic River and were within the territory of 
the principal Mohegan town, near the present 
Norwich. Hastily collecting a small force — 
about half the number of the invaders — Uncas 
went forth to meet the latter, and, having come 
near enough for a parley, proposed (in un- 
conscious emulation of such classical heroes as 
Goliath of Gath and Fuffetius, King of the 
Albans) that he and Miantonomi settle their scores 
by private combat. This method of equalizing 
forces the Narragansett sachem declined to con- 
sider. Uncas then fell flat upon his face, and his 
warriors, for whom the action was a signal to 
advance, rushed upon their foes, scattering them in 
every direction by the impetuosity of their attack. 
Miantonomi fled with his men, but, impeded by the 
weight and stiffness of some breast armor which 
had been loaned to him by Samuel Gorton,^ was 
overtaken and captured. 

' Edward Winslow says {Hypocrisy Unmasked, pp. 70-71) that the armor 
was loaned by John Wickes. 



Death of Miantonomi igi 

According to Indian custom, the captive's life was 
now forfeit to the conqueror; but Uncas — who 
knew of the league subsisting between the Narragan- 
setts and Massachusetts — hesitated to provoke the 
English by despatching his enemy, and so took 
him to Hartford where, at the royal captive's own 
earnest request, he was held prisoner pending 
action by the United Colonies. In preferring this 
request to be left in English hands, Miantonomi 
doubtless felt that he was making a not altogether 
unwarranted appeal for his life. What were the 
facts ? From the first Canonicus and himself had 
succored and befriended the English. Never in a 
single instance had they proved false. Moreover, 
by entering into the alliance with the Bay settle- 
ment, which they had done against the solicitations 
of the Pequods and against the protest of the 
inferior sachems of their own nation, they had 
perhaps saved all New England from fire and 
slaughter. Were not these strong grounds upon 
which to base an expectation that the English — so 
well instructed in the principles of equity, and so 
disposed to follow them, as Roger Williams had 
always maintained — would intervene to mitigate 
the severity of Indian custom ? True, these were 
strong grounds for such an expectation. But there 
was one thing of which Miantonomi was not aware. 
He was not aware that in countenancing Gorton 
— Gorton the heretic, Gorton the beast and 
blasphemer — he was in all likelihood making all 
that he and old Canonicus had ever done for 
the English as but dust in the balance when the 



192 Early Rhode Island 

Commissioners of the United Colonies should meet 
in Boston.^ 

The commissioners met, September 7th, and 
immediately took up the case of the captive sachem. 
According to the official record, they determined 
to base whatever action might be taken solely 
upon the agreement of September 21, 1638, en- 
tered into between Miantonomi and Uncas at 
Hartford. At the same time, they were careful to 
state that they knew and well remembered " the 
ambitious designes [of Miantonomi] to make himself 
universal Sagamore or Governor of all these parts, 
. . . [and] his treacherous plotts [to this end] 
by gifts to engage all the Indians at once to cutt 
off the whole Body of the English in these parts." ^ 
But, confining themselves to the Hartford agree- 
ment, they professed to find that Miantonomi had 
violated its terms by coming upon Uncas " sud- 
denly without denounceing warn" 

Now the language of the agreement, in the part 
said to have been violated, is as follows : " If there 
fall out injuries and wrongs for future to be done 
or committed Each to other or their men, they shall 
not presently Revenge it. But they are to appeal to 
the English and they are to decide the same. And 
if the one or the other shall Refuse to do, it shall 

' That it was Miantonomi's relations with Gorton that brought down 
upon him the wrath of Massachusetts is made very apparent in such 
remarks as the following by Edward Winslow in the Hyprocrisy Unmasked 
(PP- 75. 87): " Gorton 's so desperate close with so dangerous and patent 
enemies, and at such a time of conspiracy by the same Indians" ; " Malig- 
nant English sate down so near them and held counsel with them. 

' Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii., p. 8 et seq. 



Death of Miantonomt T93 

be lawfull for the English to Compel him, and to 
Side and take part if they see cause, against the 
obstinate or Refusing party." ^ All that is here 
provided is that before war is resorted to, the Eng- 
lish shall be given an opportunity to adjust the 
trouble ; and certainly Miantonomi had given the 
English every opportunity to effect an adjustment, 
if they could or would, in the trouble over Sequas- 
son. He had appealed first to Connecticut and been 
told that "the English had no hand in [the affair]"; 
he had then appealed to Massachusetts and been 
told that " if Onkus had done him or his friends 
wrono-, . . . we should leave him to take his own 
course." In other words, it was Miantonomi who 
had observed the terms of the agreement, and the 
English who had not ; for upon his complaint, the 
latter, instead of deciding the point in dispute, or at 
least trying to do so, as the agreement required of 
them, had deliberately washed their hands of the 
duty, and declined to intervene. 

But, brushing this consideration one side, the 
colony commissioners — those of Connecticut, 
New Haven, and Plymouth still haunted by fears 
of a conspiracy, and those of Massachusetts stimu- 
lated by hatred of Gorton — formulated a decree 
reciting that " Uncas [the Englishman's friend, 
could] not be safe while Myantenomo lived, and 
that he [therefore might] justly putt such a false 
and bloodthirsty enemie to death." ^ 

• The Hartford Treaty, R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. iii., p. 177. 
' Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii., p. 8 et seq. 

How determined the commissioners were that Miantonomi should be 
13 



194 Early Rhode Island 

The decree which pronounced Miantonomi 
worthy of death, also prescribed the place and 
manner of the execution. The place was to be 
wholly outside the " English plantations," and 
within the domains of Uncas ; and the manner, 
without "tortures and cruelty." Accordingly, upon 
the return to Hartford of the commissioners of 
Connecticut, Uncas was summoned, advised of the 
pleasant duty which had been assigned him, and, 
accompanied by two Englishmen to see that the 
terms of the death-warrant were duly observed, 
was sent with his royal victim into the Mohegan 
country. The little party proceeded rapidly to the 
field near Norwich where the capture had been 
effected, and here one of Uncas's men, as previ- 
ously arranged, stole softly up behind Miantonomi 
and buried his war-hatchet in his brain. It is 
said that, as the Narragansett sachem fell, Uncas 
sprang savagely upon him and cut a large piece 
from his shoulder, which he ate, declaring it " sweet," 
and that "it made his heart strong." The victim 
was buried on the spot, and the field has preserved 
ever since the name then given it of Sachem's 
Plain.^ 

Thus that rivalry between Uncas and Mianto- 

severely dealt with — whatever Uncas might think or do — is disclosed by the 
order made that " In case Onkus shall refuse to execute justice upon Myan- 
tenomo That then Myantenomo be sent by the Sea to Massachusetts there 
to be kept in safe durance till the Commissioners may consider further how 
to dispose of him." — Hazard, vol. ii., p. 13. 

' The text follows Trumbull in Hist, of Conn. Winthrop and Savage 
designate the place of execution as between Hartford and Windsor {Journal, 
ii., 134). 



Death of Miantonomi 195 

nomi which, beginning with the close of the Pequod 
War, had been the cause of so many letters, jour- 
neys, and anxieties to Roger Williams, now, in 
Williams's absence, reached its end. This absence 
has been mentioned on a preceding page as one of 
the circumstances contributing to Miantonomi's 
death, and in the early stage of events it is not un- 
likely that the great exile might have been able so 
to shape the conduct of the Narragansett sachem 
as to enable him in some measure to escape the per- 
ils to his safety. Later on, it is hardly to be sup- 
posed that anything could have been done in this 
direction, even had Roger Williams been at hand. 

" Surely a Rhode Island man," says Governor 
Stephen Hopkins in his history, " may be permitted 
to mourn Miantonomi's unhappy fate, and to drop 
a tear on his ashes." Surely he may, and surely 
may every American, and this without blinding 
himself in the least to the limitations of the great 
Narragansett, or to the excellences of the great 
Mohegan, his rival. 

Miantonomi was distinctly a type of those milder 
Indian traits which in Chapter III. have been indi- 
cated as possessed by the Narragansetts. He 
busied himself in war, but was only secondarily a 
warrior. His appropriate sphere was statecraft. 
Here he was thoroughly at home, and here he never 
failed to excite the admiration of Winthrop (himself 
no mean diplomatist) by the ingenuousness and 
magnanimity, controlled by discretion, with which 
he handled important affairs. That he so long re- 
tained the confidence of Massachusetts is honorable 



T96 Early Rhode Island 

alike to his fidelity and his sagacity ; and that he 
ever lost it is only Massachusetts' humiliation. Nor, 
on the other hand, is it to be wondered at that 
Uncas should have held in a superior degree the 
confidence of Connecticut. Uncas was a warrior — 
every inch of him — and a born leader of warriors 
besides ; and the protection which such an one was 
able to afford an outlying colony was of the utmost 
value. Moreover, the help given by the Mohegan 
sachem to Major Mason, in the crisis of the Pequod 
troubles, was not only valuable, but stood forth in 
sharp contrast with the course of Miantonomi, who, 
though friendly, did not attend the expedition to 
Mystic Fort, and thus did nothing to dispel from the 
minds of the Narragansetts who did attend their 
innate and well-nigh uncontrollable fear of Sassacus. 
But so we leave them, — the Indian Saladin 
crushed beneath the mace of the Indian Lion- 
hearted, — and Roger Williams, of whom we may 
think as the fitting representative of us all to lay a 
tribute of grief at the feet of old Canonicus, far from 
the land of the Narragansetts. 



CHAPTER VII 

ROGER WILLIAMS IN ENGLAND [cONTINUEd] THE 

HARRYING OF THE GORTONISTS 

THE second of the two occurrences which made 
memorable in New England the period of 
Williams's first absence abroad, — the per- 
secution of Gorton by Massachusetts, — was, like 
the execution of Miantonomi, due to combining cir- 
cumstances. To begin with, the Narragansett set- 
tlements, in their attitude of friendliness toward 
heretics, had long been felt to be a menace by 
the Massachusetts Theocracy^; and secondly, the 
Arnold coterie in their greed for land, and not un- 
justifiable fear of Gorton as a foe to civil order, were 

' A specific instance is the case of John Greene of Providence. Greene 
came to New England in the next ship after that which brought Roger 
Williams, and settled at Salem. Disliking the Massachusetts system, he 
followed Williams to Providence. On August i, 1636, he was back in 
Salem to arrange for the sale of his house. Being overheard in conversation 
to say that the power of the Lord Jesus in Massachusetts was in the hand of 
civil authority, he was put under bonds by Endicott to answer for contempt. 
Later on (March 12, 1638) an act was passed by Massachusetts that " John 
Greene shall not come into this jurisdiction upon paine of imprisonment etc. , 
and because it appears . . . that some other of the same place [Provi- 
dence] are confident in the same corrupt judgment and practice, it is ordered 
that if [they] shall come within this jurisdiction, they shall be apprehended 
. . . and if they will not disclaime the said corrupt opinion . . . they 
shall be commanded presently to depart" — Mass. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 224. 

197 



1 98 Early Rhode Island 

the means of putting it in the way of the Theocracy 
to extend its jurisdiction among those whose pres- 
ence it found so disquieting. 

The deed to Samuel Gorton for Shawomet 
(made in 1643) conveyed, in general terms, a tract 
extending from what is now Gaspee Point to War- 
wick Neck, and twenty miles inland, — a tract cor- 
responding with the greater part of the present 
townships of Warwick and Coventry. It was 
signed by Miantonomi as lord proprietor, and by 
Pumham as local sachem, and the grantees were 
H olden, Greene, Gorton, and eight others already 
familiar by name as members of Gorton's com- 
pany. Not long after the execution of the deed 
in question, — that is, in May, 1643, — Pumham, 
the local sachem of Shawomet, and Sacononoco, 
local sachem of Pawtuxet, accompanied by Bene- 
dict Arnold as interpreter, came to Boston and 
offered to submit themselves to the authority of 
Massachusetts. They were moved to make the 
offer, they said, because they found themselves 
"overborne" by Miantonomi and Gorton, the 
latter of whom had " so prevailed " with the 
Narragansett sachem as that Miantonomi had 
" forced " Pumham to join with him in the deed 
for Shawomet. It is very naturally the opinion of 
Gorton, as set forth in Simplicitie s Defence, that 
this offer of submission was a cunningly contrived 
piece of strategy on the part of Massachusetts for 
obtaininp; that control over him and his followers 
which had so nearly been obtained by the sub- 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 199 

mission of the Arnolds, as related in Chapter IV. 

This opinion, however, hardly seems warranted. 
The Arnolds had abundant reason on their own 
account for wishing to see the jurisdiction of the 
Bay Commonwealth extended over Shawomet. 
They had already (January, 1641) purchased Paw- 
tuxet^ from Sacononoco, and were intending to 
make further purchases in the same region, — an 
intention evidenced by a deed from Sacononoco 
dated in 1644, and by one from Massasoit dated in 
1645, — and the purchase actually made, and those 
to be made, would, in case the proprietary 
authority of Miantonomi were superseded by that 
of Massachusetts, cause the Arnolds, through 
their titles derived from the local sachems, to be- 
come sole owners of Pawtuxet and Shawomet ; in 
a word, would make their fortunes. But the diffi- 
culty was how to get the jurisdiction of the Bay 
extended in the quarter desired. Some pretext 
must be devised which would not merely save the 
face of Massachusetts, but, to some reasonable 
extent, cause the government and people to feel 
that there was religious warrant for the proceed- 
ing. It would not do to neglect the element of 
religion when dealing with the Puritans. 

Under these circumstances the Arnolds be- 
thought themselves of a simple plan. They had 
brought Pawtuxet under the jurisdiction of the 

' "All the lands Marshes meadowes Islands Rivers ponds lyeing betweene 
the great fresh or salt River called Patuxset River, both above and below 
the falls, the River called Pachasett and the river called Wanasquatuckett 
& the great salt River that is betweene Providence and Patuxit." — Suffolk 
(Mass.) Co. Records, liber i., p. 63, 



200 Early Rhode Island 

Bay by submitting their own persons and estates ; 
why could they not bring Shawomet under the 
same jurisdiction by getting Pumham to submit 
his person ? There would be no trouble so far as 
Pumham was concerned. He was notorious for 
thievinof and laziness, and could be induced to do 
almost anything for rum and wampum. Some 
doubt may have been felt as to being able to over- 
come the influence of Miantonomi with Massachu- 
setts ; but it was remembered that now Miantonomi 
had become friendly with Gorton, and must there- 
fore have exposed himself to the suspicion of his 
ally. Then, capping all, was no doubt the reflec- 
tion that should Massachusetts be given an oppor- 
tunity, through the submission of Pumham, to 
extend its jurisdiction over Shawomet, heresy 
incarnate could be called to stern account in 
Samuel Gorton ; and that Massachusetts, per- 
ceiving this, would feel itself in possession of 
that religious warrant armed with which there was 
virtually nothing that it would not dare. 

Indeed, from this scheme of the Arnolds, as a 
scheme, it is difficult to withhold admiration. It was 
so complete and promised to kill so many birds 
with one stone. It was to make each of the 
Arnolds rich, to wreak the most exquisite vengeance 
upon a personal enemy, and at the same time to 
effect this through a catspaw, or instrumentality, 
that would not only profit by it in a material sense 
itself, but find in it chiefly the hand of God smiting 
the blasphemer of his holy Word. 

Winthrop says that the act of submission on the 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 201 

part of Pumham and Sacononoco was not of their 
(Massachusetts') seeking, and, as above explained, 
this is no doubt true. But it is none the less true 
that Massachusetts had for some time — ever since 
the appeal of the thirteen of Providence against 
Gorton — held itself in a highly receptive attitude 
toward any " Godly " plan by which it might bring 
under its sway one or more of the Narragansett 
settlements. Accordingly, when Pumham and 
Sacononoco were introduced into the presence of 
Governor Winthrop by Benedict Arnold, they 
were oraciouslv received. Their statements were 
listened to, and word was sent to Miantonomi and 
Gorton to appear at the next General Court and 
show cause why they should not be ousted from 
their possession of Shawomet. 

Miantonomi, as has been seen in Chapter VI., 
came as bidden, and stoutly maintained his preten- 
sions as lord proprietor of the region in dispute. 
In opposition to him, it was maintained by Cut- 
shamekin — sachem of the Massachusetts tribe — that 
the Narragansett sachem had no authority over 
Pumham and Sacononoco, and this was confirmed 
by Benedict Arnold. It does not appear that Mi- 
antonomi was prepared to show affirmatively that 
he had authority. Nor in fact ought this to have 
been necessary. The court of the Bay might well 
have taken judicial notice of the supremacy of Mi- 
antonomi, at least within the admitted limits of the 
Narragansett country, where Shawomet was situa- 
ted. As great and proud a sachem as Massasoit 
had freely acknowledged to Roger Williams that 



202 Early Rhode Island 

he was tributary to the Narragansetts, and yet he 
dwelt to the east of Narragansett Bay, and hence 
wholly outside the territory immediately ruled by 
Canonicus and his nephew. Moreover, the local 
sachem of Aquidneck had refused to negotiate for 
the sale of the Island to Coddington on the ground 
that he was tributary to Miantonomi. 

But, aside from these general considerations in 
favor of the pretensions of the latter, the very lan- 
guage of Cutshamekin lends them support. He 
said, as reported by Winthrop, that Pumham and 
Sacononoco were " as free Sachems as himself ; only 
because he [Miantonomi] was a great Sachem they 
had sometimes sent him presents, and aided him in 
his war against the Pequots." Here then we have 
an admission of the tributary character of the rela- 
tion to the Narragansetts not only of Pumham and 
Sacononoco, but also of Cutshamekin. The latter 
of course minimized as much as possible the some- 
what humiliatine fact that the several nations within 
the limits of the Plymouth and Massachusetts grants 
were in subjection, — were but a part, that is, of the 
Narragansett Empire. Indeed, there could have 
been expected of Indian pride no less. But the min- 
imizing process was patent, and ought not to 
have been permitted to deceive. And finally it 
should not have been forgotten, that Pumham had 
in the first instance put his hand to the deed for 
Shawomet along with the hand of Miantonomi, and 
that his subsequent plea of having done so under 
duress was — in view of his reputation for flagrant 
dishonesty — entitled to but scant respect. 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 203 

But Massachusetts was blind to these things, and 
proceeded at once to get the act of submission by 
the two sachems into form. And at this point a 
step was taken that, in its unconscious humor, goes 
farther than anything else perhaps toward certifying 
the honesty — bigoted though it were — of the 
Theocracy in the whole Gorton episode. Two com- 
missioners, Humphrey Atherton and Edward Tom- 
lyns, were sent to Shawomet " to open " to the 
two sachems, Pumham and Sacononoco, the ten 
commandments ; it evidently having been decided 
to receive these natives as protegds only upon satis- 
factory profession of their faith. 

The first question propounded by the commis- 
sioners was, Winthrop tells us, whether the sachems 
would worship the true God that made heaven and 
earth, and not blaspheme Him. To this the Indians 
replied that they desired " not to speak evil " of the 
Englishman's God, because "we see [He] doth bet- 
ter for them than other Gods do for others." The 
second question asked was whether they would con- 
sent " not to swear falsely." To this they answered: 
"We never knew what swearino^ or an oath was." 
They were then asked whether they would consent 
not to do any unnecessary work on the Lord's Day. 
Their reply was : " It is a small thing for us to rest 
on that day, for we have not much to do any day." 
The fourth question was with regard to honoring 
parents and superiors. The sachems answered : 
" It is our custom so to do, . . . for if we 
complain to the Governor of the Massachusetts 
that we have wrong, if they [he] tell us we lie, 



204 Early Rhode Island 

we shall willingly bear it." It is in view of these, 
and a few other like professions, that the good Win- 
throp feels moved to say : " We looked upon it as 
a fruit of our prayers, and the first fruit of our hopes, 
that the example would bring in others, and that 
the Lord was by this means making a way to bring 
them to civility, and so to conversion to the knowl- 
edge and embracing of the gospel in his due time." 

The scheme of the Arnolds was, indeed, working 
well when the Governor of Massachusetts could thus 
joyfully receive under the shadow of the wing of his 
Bible Commonwealth rascals of the type of Pumham 
and Sacononoco (forSacononoco was equally a thief 
with Pumham), moralizing the while in high strain 
upon the edifying answers which these same rascals 
had just made to a series of interrogatories upon the 
ten commandments. Such a thinor could not have oc- 
curred had the Puritans possessed humor ; but had 
they possessed humor, they had not been Puritans. 

The business with the sachems of Shawomet and 
Pawtuxet was concluded on June 2 2d, by the 
signing of a formal act wherein these veracious 
worthies proclaimed that they *' voluntarily, and 
without any constraint or persuasion, put [them- 
selves, their] subjects, lands, and estates under the 
government and jurisdiction of the Massachusetts "; 
promising fealty for themselves and their posterity, 
and " to be willing from time to time to be in- 
structed in the knowledge and worship of God."^ 

' The virtual buying of the religious submission of the Indians, practised 
by Massachusetts, attracted the notice of the King's commissioners in 1665. 
They say (No. 63, J. Carter Brown Coll. Brit. State Papers): " [The Puritans] 



The Ha7'7ying of the Gortonists 205 

But what, the meanwhile, concerning Samuel 
Gorton ? He, as well as Miantonomi, had been sum- 
moned to show cause why he should not be ousted 
from Shawomet. More wary, however, than Mian- 
tonomi, he had not seen fit to heed the summons. 
He had chosen rather to discharge at long range a 
missile of four closely written pages " full," says 
Winthrop, "of reproaches against our magistrates, 
elders, and churches." He also, it seems, gave him- 
self the pleasure of discharging an oral missile (by 
Benedict Arnold) to the effect that, if Massachusetts 
" sent men against " him and his company, " they 
were ready to meet [them], being assured of victory 
from God." For the present, the General Court 
paid but slight attention to these stinging com- 
munications, merely commissioning Atherton and 
Tomlyns, who were setting out on their errand to 
Pumham and Sacononoco concerninpf the ten com- 
mandments, to visit the Gortonists eii route, and 
make sure that the writing received had really em- 
anated thence, — a work of supererogation, to say 
the least. 

Thus, so far as Massachusetts was concerned, 
matters stood from June, 1643, to September. But 
if during this interval the Puritans were quiescent, 
it was not so with their newly constituted protdg^s. 

convert Indians by hiring them to come and hear sermons; they teaching 
them not to obey their Heathen Sachims. . . . The lives manners and 
habits of those whom they say are converted cannot be distinguished from 
those who are not, except it be by being hired to hear sermons, which the 
more generous natives scorne." And upon this point Roger Williams says 
(Letter to Mass., R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 322): " The Indians which pre- 
tend your name at Warwick and Pawtuxet, and yet live as barbarously if 
not more than any in the country." 



2o6 Early Rhode Island 

Pumham and Sacononoco, laden with gifts, and 
filled with the spirit of the Puritan Church Militant, 
— if not with a spirit of still higher potency, — re- 
turned home breathing forth threatenings and 
slaughter against heretics. Henceforth it was hot 
times at Shawomet. The Indians — conscious of 
the backing of Massachusetts, and refreshed by 
daily communings with the Arnolds, the official 
representatives (through William Arnold) of the 
Bay at Pawtuxet — waxed continually bolder in in- 
solence. They shot the cattle belonging to the 
Gortonists in the sides with arrows ; they in some 
instances killed the cattle outright, and hung the 
quarters in their wigwams ; they skulked about the 
cabins, in the absence of the men in the fields, now 
and again hurling from their cowardly concealments 
sharp stones at the heads of the women and chil- 
dren ; they stole everything they could lay hand 
on : even the princely Pumham, despite his high 
regard for the ten commandments, was caught in 
one instance, heavy with spoil, as he was escaping 
by way of the chimney. And it was no better with 
Sacononoco. His royal conscience permitted him 
fairly to revel in the personal effects of the settlers, 
as he came across them in the course of his prowl- 
ing. " The Massachusetts are all one with In- 
dian," was the vaunting reply to any expostulation 
by the Gortonists at the liberties taken and insults 
practised. 

Still, in this extremity, the powers of the Gor- 
tonists, trained in the art of retaliation, would 
seem to have proved no mean resource, for by 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 207 

September both the Arnold coterie and the mon- 
archs, Pumham and Sacononoco, were forced to 
throw up their hands and call on Massachusetts 
for help. Winthrop thus writes in his Journal on 
September 7th : 

" Upon complaint of the English of Patuxet near Provi- 
dence, who had submitted to our jurisdiction, and the two 
Indian Sachems there, of the continual injuries offered them 
by Gorton and his company, the general court sent for 
them ... to come answer the complaints, etc. But they 
answered our messengers disdainfully, refused to come, but 
sent two letters full of blasphemy against the churches and 
magistracy." 

Of the two letters to which Winthrop here refers, 
one at least has been preserved. It bears date, 
September 12, 1643, and is probably the most fin- 
ished piece of invective that Gorton ever produced. 
The style is much more direct and cogent than 
that of the famous epistle despatched from Paw- 
tuxet in November, 1642. One is almost led to 
believe that, in this instance, Gorton submitted his 
work to his companions for criticism, and that, 
through the joint efforts of the company, there was 
brought forth a masterpiece of its kind. Certain it 
is that nearly every phrase is well aimed, carries 
true, and must have exasperated to the last de- 
gree men of the stamp of most of the Puritan 
magistrates and elders. 

The opening words are as follow : 

** To the great and honored Idol General now set up in the 
Massachusetts, whose pretended equity in distribution of jus- 
tice unto the souls and bodies of men is nothing else but a 



2o8 Early Rhode Island 

mere device of man, according to the ancient custom and 
sleights of Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light, 
to subject and make slaves of that species or kind that God 
hath honored with his own image." 

Then quickly comes this stroke : 

" You have writ another note unto us to add to your former 
pride and folly, telling us again you have taken Pomham with 
others into your jurisdiction and Government, etc, . . . You 
might have done well to have proved yourselves Christians 
before you had mingled yourselves with the heathens ; that so 
your children might have known how to put a distinction 
betwixt you and them, in after times ; but we perceive that to 
be too hard a work for yourselves to perform even in times 
present." 

The Puritans are then described as 

" living by blood, . . . either through incision of the nose, 
division of the ear from the head, stigmatis upon the back, 
suffocation of the veins through extremity of cold by . . . 
banishments in the winter, or strangl[ing] in the flesh with a 
halter . . . for [to resume direct quotation] without the 
practice of these things, you cannot kiss your hand, bless your 
idol, nor profess your vows and offerings to be paid and 
performed." 

Being such (the letter continues), and wanting 
others 

" to betray the liberties God hath given us into your hands, you 
now work by your coadjutors — these accursed Indians. But 
you are deceived in us. We are not a cup fitted for your so 
eager appetite, no otherwise than if you take it down it shall 
prove unto you a cup of trembling, either making you vomit 
out your own eternal shame, or else to burst in sunder like 
your fellow confessor for hire, Judas Iscariot. . . . Know, 
therefore, [and here is a passage with an anticipatory touch of 
Junius or of Grattan in it] that our lives are set apart already 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 209 

for the case we have in hand. . . . For we are resolved 
that according as you put forth yourselves toward us, so shall 
you find us transformed to answer you. If you put forth your 
hands to us as countrymen, ours are in readiness for you, — if 
you exercise your pen, accordingly do we become a ready 
writer, — if your sword be drawn, ours is girt upon our thigh, — 
if you present a gun, make haste to give the first fire, for we 
are come to put fire upon the earth ; and it is our desire to have 
it speedily kindled." 

The latter part of the letter is devoted to a scath- 
ing characterization of Pumham and Sacononoco. 
The former, in view of his chimney escapade, is al- 
luded to with grim humor as " indeed an aspiring 
person, as becomes a prince of his profession " ; and 
Massachusetts is plainly told that "as you tolerate 
and maintain these Indians in other of their daily 
practices, as lying, Sabbath-breaking, taking of 
many wifes, . . . and fornication, so you will 
do also in their stealing and abusing of our children." 
At the end of the communication are the words : 
" The joint act, not of the General Court, but of the 
peculiar fellowship now abiding upon Mshawomet." ^ 

This defiance — more clarion than that of a Doug- 
las, but which the pious author of the Wonder- 
working Providence describes as '* a whole paper 
of beastly stuff" — brought a quick response from 
Massachusetts. Here was blasphemy unmistakable, 
here was heresy full-grown, and the Theocracy saw 
its way plain before it. On September 19th, a note 
was despatched to the Gortonists, stating that the 
Bay Government was about to send commissioners 
to Shawomet to " lay open the charges against 

' "Simplicitie's Defence," R. I. Hist. Coll. vol. ii., p. 262 (appendix). 

VOL. I. — 14. 



2IO Early Rhode Island 

them." "We give you also to understand," con- 
tinued the note, " that we shall send a sufficient 
guard with our commissioners for their safety 
against any violence or injury." The commis- 
sioners themselves were Captain George Cook, 
Lieutenant Humphrey Atherton, and Edward 
Johnson. These, with a representative from the 
clergy and a squad of forty men-at-arms, set out on 
the week following that in which Gorton's letter was 
received, and soon reached Providence. Hearing of 
the advance of the party, the Gortonists met them 
by a messenger bearing a letter which warned 
them not to set foot upon the lands of the com- 
pany, declaring that " if any blood be shed, upon 
your own heads shall it be." The commissioners 
replied that it was their desire to convince the Gor- 
tonists of the "evil of their way," and "cause them 
to divert their course " ; failing in which, "we then 
shall look upon them as men prepared for slaughter." 
These words when reported created consternation 
amonor the women and children of the Shawomet 
company, some of whom fled into the woods to hide 
themselves, and others to the water-side to take boat 
for Providence or Portsmouth. The soldiers, how- 
ever, came upon the scene before those who were 
striving to escape by boat were all embarked, and 
levelled their muskets at the fugitives. This occa- 
sioned haste in pushing off the boats, and such as 
were behind were forced to throw themselves into 
the water, and by wading and swimming fairly to 
struggle on board. Indeed, the final result (in the 
case of the women) of the approach and threatening 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 211 

demeanor of the soldiers was in several instances 
serious, and in two fatal. The wife of John Greene 
and the wife of Robert Potter both died from fright 
and exposure, while other women were brought to 
death's door through the pangs of premature child- 
birth. As for the men, they as far as possible 
aided their wives in escaping, but could do little ere 
the soldiers came in sig-ht. With the arrival of the 
latter, the men, — including Gorton, who just had 
time to commit his wife (" great with child ") to the 
care of some of his Providence neiofhbors that were 
following the soldiery, — betook themselves to a log 
house,^ and prepared for resistance. 

At this, the party from Providence — among 
whom were Chad Brown, Thomas Olney, William 
Field, and William Wickenden — went to the 
Massachusetts commissioners and insisted upon a 
parley. After some demur — chiefly upon the 
point whether those from Providence should be 
admitted as witnesses to the parley — consent was 
given. Accordingly the commissioners and some 
of the Gortonists met in the presence of the four 
from Providence above named, and gave each 
other audience. The Gortonists demanded why 
they were thus set upon. The commissioners an- 
swered, first because they had wronged the Arnolds 

' " The place ," says Judge George A. Bray ton, " is well defined by tradi- 
tion. It is now an open field south of the house belonging to the heirs of 
Stephen G. Warner, and between it and the small river or mill-pond " (Rid- 
er's Hist. Tract No. 77, p. 108). That Samuel Gorton owned the land on 
the mill-pond, or rather mill-race, is confirmed by a deed now in the pos- 
session of Mr. George Gorton of Providence. 

Gorton lived at a later time at Warwick Cove, where until recently the 
ruins of his dwelling might be seen. 



2 1 2 Early Rhode Islmid 

and Pumham and Sacononoco, all of whom were 
subjects of Massachusetts ; and second, because 
they " held blasphemous errors " whereof they must 
repent or be taken to Boston for punishment. The 
Gortonists then proposed that the whole matter 
be referred for settlement to the " Honorable 
State of England." This was peremptorily refused. 
They next proposed that it be referred to local 
arbitrators, offering to pledge their "goods, lands, 
and persons " to satisfy any award that might be 
made. This proposal was so far entertained as to 
be made the basis for a truce while instructions 
were sought from the Massachusetts Government. 
During the continuance of the truce, the soldiers 
broke open the houses of the Gortonists, appropri- 
ated their writings, killed their swine for food for 
themselves and for certain of their Indian protdgds 
whom they had brought with them, and made 
themselves comfortable on the bedding which they 
found. 

Meantime, unknown to the men of the company, 
the Providence party (October 2d) addressed a 
courteous note to Governor Winthrop, stating : 

" Some of their [the Gortonists'] wives and children (if a 
mournful spectacle might move you) do beg for a serious 
consideration of their husbands' and fathers' propositions, 
which if not hearkened unto, were like in man's eye to be left 
miserable. We would they were able to write their own grief, 
which now in pity we have respect unto." 

On October 3d (?) Winthrop replied to the note 
in question, plainly disclosing in what he said that 



The Harry ijig of the Gortonists 213 

it was principally to punish the heresy of the com- 
pany at Shawomet that the expedition had been 
sent. His words were : 

"You may do well to take further notice that besides the title 
of land between the Indians and the English there, there are 
twelve of the English that have subscribed their names to 
horrible and detestable blasphemies against God and all mag- 
istracy; who are rather to be judged as blasphemers (especially 
if they persist therein) rather than they should delude us by 
winning time under pretence of arbitration." 

Some days later the commissioners themselves 
received word from Boston, and the word was 
that they were to proceed to execute their orders 
without further delay. In his y^z^r/z^/ Winthrop 
notes the grounds for this decision, and also that 
in reaching it, certain of the elders (who were called 
in) were largely instrumental. These grounds 
were, (i) "because [the Gortonists] would never 
offer us any terms of peace before we had sent our 
soldiers "; (2) because the former, by the submis- 
sion of the Arnolds and of Pumham, were within 
"our jurisdiction"; (3) because the Gortonists 
" were no State but a few fugitives living without 
law or government "; (4) because " the parties 
whom they would refer [the matter] unto for arbi- 
tration were such as were rejected by us and all the 
governments in the country "; (5) because " their 
[the Gortonists'] blasphemous and reviling writings 
were not matters fit to be compounded by arbitra- 
ment, but to be purged away only by repentance 
and public satisfaction, or else by public punish- 
ment"; and (6) because "the Commission and 



2 1 4 Early Rhode Island 

instructions being given by the General Court, it 
was not in our power to alter them." 

Negotiations having failed, the Massachusetts 
force proceeded to intrench themselves within good 
musket range of the log house held by the Gor- 
tonists, and when the work was completed at once 
opened fire. The beseiged, on their part, hung the 
colors of "Old England" from their rude battle- 
ments, but, despite the fact that the banner was 
riddled with shot, made no return upon the enemy. 
The attack had been fruitlessly kept up for several 
days when the Sabbath came on. It was the ex- 
pectation of the Gortonists that in view of the 
Sabbath, which was to the Puritans a day of the 
utmost sanctity, the attack would be suspended. 
But the knights of the Theocracy, evidently think- 
ing the destruction of heretics a task eminently befit- 
ting God's Day, signalized the same, in its dawning 
hour, by attempting to burn the shelter of their 
stubborn foe. It furthermore was the intention of 
the attacking party to make, under cover of the 
conflagration, a charge upon the house, and — as 
their captain (George Cook) was overheard to say 
— to put every inmate to the sword. But the wind 
proved contrary and drove the flames away from the 
structure, — an incident which much encouraged the 
Gortonists, who " called cheerfully upon the Captain 
to come on and bring up his men," for, they assured 
him, " he should find [them] very cheerful spirits to 
deal with, and [they] would make him as good a 
Sabbath day's breakfast as he ever had in his life." 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 2 1 5 

The failure of the plan to burn the Gortonists 
out of their fortress seems to have inclined the 
commissioners to further parley, for a truce was 
now arranged, and as a result the beseiged con- 
sented to accompany the commissioners to Boston. 
Gorton himself insists, in Simplicitie s Defence 
that the agreement was explicit that " we should go 
along ... as free men and neighbors," and not as 
captives ; and although this was denied by Captain 
Cook, there is strong warrant for believing the 
statement of Gorton. If the reader will turn, in 
volume ii. of the Rhode Island Historical Collec- 
tion, to Appendix X., he will find the following ex- 
plicit though unintentional confirmation of Gorton's 
claim by Massachusetts itself : " They charge our 
Commissioners with breach of covenant in not 
keeping those honorable terms which they yielded 
upon, etc ; . . . the grand condition which they in- 
sisted upon in their surrender, it was that they 
should go down with our Commissioners unbound, 
and have safe condiLct ; which they had, not being 
bound, but in that respect as much at liberty in the 
journey as any of ours." They were not bound, it 
is true, but how about the " safe conduct " ? We 
shall see presently. 

Meanwhile, personally, I cannot forbear the ex- 
pression of disappointment and chagrin that the 
Gortonists, who were well supplied with arms and 
ammunition, did not make use of them upon their 
enemy during the attack, instead of limiting them- 
selves to a purely passive resistance. Gorton 
states that it had been the resolve of his company 



2 1 6 Early Rhode Island 

" to take away the lives of none of their country- 
men unless they offered to enter violently upon us, 
or else that we were forced out upon them by the 
firing of our house." This is humane (it was perhaps 
also wisdom, in view of the inevitableness of final 
defeat), but it is hardly Gortonian. It does not 
quite keep pace with the fiery invective of those 
Junius-Grattan passages wherein Massachusetts is 
challenged to draw the sword, for " ours is girt 
upon our thigh," and is told that " if any blood be 
shed, upon your own heads shall it be." 

But whether wholly in character or not, the com- 
pany at Shawomet capitulated without bloodshed, 
and, their weapons having been seized, and their 
cattle — to the number of four-score head — having 
been divided as spoil, were all marched away. Up 
to this point the clergyman with the command 
had found little to do. But now, as with captives 
in train, the command came into the jurisdiction of 
the Theocracy, the wielder of the sword spiritual 
caused a halt to be made in various towns, while, 
in the words of Gorton, he " gathered the people 
together in the open streets, and went to prayers 
that the people might take notice that what had 
been done had been done in a holy manner 
and in the name of the Lord." In Dorchester 
a crowd was found already assembled under the 
Rev. John Cotton and the Rev. Richard Mather ; 
and here, as Gorton has it, " they placed us at 
their pleasure, as they thought fit to have us stand, 
and made vollies of shot over our heads in sign 
of victory." 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 217 

Boston was reached at last. The command was 
paraded before the door of Governor Winthrop's 
house while the captain and other commissioners 
went within to announce to the Governor in person 
the successful accomplishment of their mission. 
The latter shortly issued forth, and passing through 
the files bestowed his blessing upon the soldiers, 
thanking them and asking from the captain a list 
of their names. " We thought he did it," says 
Gorton, " to imitate Melchisedek coming out to 
bless Abraham when he came from the slaughter 
of the Kings, in the rescue of Lot, he did it so 
gravely and solemnly." The ceremony of the 
blessing over, the prisoners were brought before 
the Governor " in his hall," and committed to 
await the next meeting of the General Court. 

The arrival of the Gortonists in Boston created 
intense excitement throughout Massachusetts. In- 
deed, in the Bay Commonwealth of 1643 3. band of 
heretics, so bold and contumacious as these, was 
regarded very much as a band of red-handed An- 
archists would be now. " The country came in on 
every side," says Gorton, " to understand the cause 
why [we had been so proceeded against]." To 
satisfy public curiosity, and, likewise, no doubt, 
their own, the magistrates decided that the pris- 
oners should be compelled to come to meeting on 
the next Lord's Day, and hear a sermon of high 
admonition from the Rev. John Cotton. There 
was the greater likelihood of entertainment from 
the fact that the Gortonists had been promised an 



2 1 8 Early Rhode Island 

opportunity to reply to what should be said, in 
case they found occasion. 

The edifice in use for sacred purposes in Boston 
was no longer the mud-walled structure which had 
resounded to the voice of John Wheelwright in the 
Fast-day Sermon. A new house of worship had 
been built at a cost of a thousand pounds. It stood 
near the site of the old, and was fitted out, accord- 
ing to the taste of the time, with lofty pulpit, 
gallery, and high enclosed pews for "the quality." 
Hither the Gortonists were brought, on the Sab- 
bath in question, and placed " in the fourth seat 
right before the elders," where they must endure 
both the silent fire of the elders' eyes, and the 
audible fire of Cotton's discourse as it hurtled over 
the elders' heads. The reverend teacher's text was 
from that part of Acts xix. which relates to Demet- 
rius and the silver shrines for Diana. After the 
sermon, Gorton arose and made an effective point 
against Cotton by comparing the ordinances and 
sacraments of the churches to those same silver 
shrines at Ephesus, which were but " men's inven- 
tions for show and pomp." It is, I think, safe to 
say that our Professor of Christian Mysteries rather 
enjoyed this first attendance upon divine worship 
in Boston, enforced though it were. But that he 
grew weary of the enforced attendance of subse- 
quent Sabbaths is fairly to be inferred from his 
description of the spiritual food furnished by the 
Puritans as " only to be digested by the heart or 
stomach of an ostrich." 

The General Court assembled durinof October 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 219 

(the current month) and Gorton and his follow- 
ers were duly arraigned. No witnesses appeared 
against the prisoners ; they were arraigned solely 
upon their letters. Just what the charges, as made 
up from the letters, were to be, evidently gave the 
court some trouble. Indeed, no specific charges 
were made till near the end of the trial, — that is to 
say, till just before sentence was pronounced, — 
when the company were informed that they were 
*' charged to be blasphemous enemies of the true 
religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all his 
holy ordinances, and likewise of all civil government 
among his people, and particularly within this juris- 
diction." ^ Before this Gorton had demurred to 
the jurisdiction of the court, and had denied the 
accuracy of the court's construction of his letters 
as set forth in a bill of twenty-six particulars. 

The question of jurisdiction was disposed of by 
the virtual admission that the jurisdiction assumed 
was that with which Massachusetts was clothed by 
superior might.^ There was then begun a long, 
tedious inquisition into the religious opinions of 
Samuel Gorton. The court, supported by a com- 
mittee of elders, sat in secrecy behind guarded 
doors, and the prisoners were brought separately 
forward for examination. The object apparently 
was to entrap them into some heretical or blas- 
phemous utterance. With the same object, certain 

' Winthrop's Journal, ii., 146. 

^ The court said : "If they [the Gortonists] were under no jurisdiction, 
then had we none to complain unto for redress of our injuries ; and then 
we must either right ourselves and our subjects by force of arms, or else we 
must sit still under all their reproaches," etc. 



2 20 Early Rhode Island 

of the elders and church members visited the Gor- 
tonlsts in prison ; and so two or three weeks were 
consumed. The pubHc, meanwhile, were kept 
amused by sermons from the Rev. John Wilson and 
the Rev. John Cotton : the former "pressing the 
magistrates and the people to take away the lives " 
of the Gortonists, citing for warrant copious Old 
Testament Scripture, such as the case of the King of 
Israel and Benhadad and that of Samuel and Agag. 
At length it was seen that matters must be 
brought to a head, and Gorton himself (by this 
time — in Puritan imagination — raised almost to 
the state of a fallen angel in blackness) was sum- 
moned into the presence of Winthrop and the 
magistrates, and told that "he was now to answer 
some things that should be propounded unto him 
upon his life." These were four queries, viz.: (i) 
" Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ 
was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and 
saved only by the blood which he shed, and the 
death which he suffered after his incarnation "; 
(2) " whether the only price of our redemption 
were not the death of Christ upon the cross, with 
the rest of his sufferings and obediences in the 
time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin 
Mary "; (3) " who is that God whom he thinks 
we serve"; (4) "what he means when he saith, 
We worship the star of our God Remphan, Chion, 
Moloch ?" And not only were these queries to be 
answered by Gorton upon his life, but, he was told, 
they were to be answered in writing and within 
fifteen minutes. 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 221 

One might well suppose a time limit of fifteen 
minutes, upon answers to queries involving the fun- 
damentals of the entire dispensation of Christ, to 
be calculated somewhat to perturb even a Pro- 
fessor of Christian Mysteries, but Gorton did not 
flinch. He merely remarked that while he could 
give answer within the time named, he could hardly 
promise to do so satisfactorily. He was then 
granted half an hour, and no sooner had he taken 
his pen well in hand than word was brought to 
him that, as it was Saturday afternoon, and hence 
the eve of the Sabbath, he might take till Monday 
morning. 

The answers which, on the morning in question, 
Gorton submitted to the court show either that he 
did not comprehend his own theology sufficiently 
to discriminate it in essentials from orthodox Puri- 
tan belief, or else that (convinced that so to dis- 
criminate it meant certain death) he chose to let it 
be thought not to differ in essentials from Puritan 
orthodoxy. Thus his answer to the first query 
was, substantially, " yes" ; to the second, " yes " ; to 
the third, " the true God " ; and to the fourth, an 
ambiguous explanation which cleared up nothing. 
It is evident that the Theocrats were vastly disap- 
pointed at the replies which their queries had 
elicited. They had counted upon Gorton's laying 
himself open as he had done in his letters. But he 
had not done so, and therefore the whole high 
tragedy which they had conceived of as involved in 
his capture and inquisition had come to naught ; 
had in truth fallen to bathos and flat anti-climax. 



22 2 Early Rhode Island 

Winthrop's vexation distinctly appears in such 
entries in his Journal as this : " They excel the 
Jesuits in the art of equivocation " ; " they would 
acknowledge no error or fault in their writings, and 
yet would seem sometimes to consent with us in 
the truth." And it is a remark of Gorton's, the 
irony of which (were it not thoroughly unconscious) 
would be thoroughly Mephistophelian, that the 
Governor having said to him that the court and 
elders ** were one with him in those answers," he 
replied that " he was very glad of it, for he loved 
not differences and divisions amongst men." 

The Gortonists were beginning to prove a Tartar 
to Massachusetts. They had been easily caught, 
but the question what to do with them, now that 
they were caught, was difficult. Winthrop mourn- 
fully records that " after divers means had been 
used both in public and private to reclaim them, 
and all proving fruitless, the Court proceeded to 
consider of their sentence, in which the Court was 
much divided." He further records that "all the 
magistrates, save three, were of the opinion that 
Gorton ought to die, but the greatest number of 
the deputies dissenting, that vote did not pass." 
The escape, however, was by an exceedingly nar- 
row margin ; Gorton himself ascertained that he 
was saved by two votes only.^ The sentence which 

' One of these votes was cast by John Endicott. " ' Not to save our lives,* 
Endicott sayd, ' but only som space of tyme to be given before execution ' " ; 
and when " som of the Court moved to have it put to vote againe, 
the Governer Mr. John Winthrope, answered, ' the finger of God is in it, 
let it go as it is.' " — Letter of Gorton, et al., to Earl of Clarendon, April 4, 
1662, J. Carter Brown Library. 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 223 

at length was passed upon Gorton and his fol- 
lowers was that they should be dispersed among 
the several towns of Massachusetts, there, in each 
instance, with irons upon the leg, "to work for their 
living, and not to depart the limits of the town, nor 
by word or writing maintain any of their blas- 
phemous or wicked errors, upon pain of death." 

Accordingly the fetters were imposed, and the 
company having, on Lecture day, and in their iron 
furniture, listened to a final admonition from 
Cotton in that sanctuary which, in the words of 
Gorton, " had set the sword on work to such good 
purpose," were forthwith sent to their respective 
places of confinement.^ But the matter was not 
so speedily ended. Just as in the case of Roger 
Williams after sentence, so in that of the Gorton- 
ists, it was found that "they did corrupt some of 
our people, especially the women, by their her- 
esies." This the Theocracy, true to its nature, of 
course could not endure, and it was resolved at 
the ensuing court that, as it was more dangerous to 
keep the Gortonists prisoners than to set them at 
liberty, the latter should be done. They were 
therefore relieved of their fetters, and ordered to 
depart within fourteen days out of the jurisdiction 
of the Bay, and out of that of Providence and of 
the sachems Pumham and Sacononoco ; a return 

' Those sentenced were Gorton, Wickes, II olden, Potter, Carder, Weston, 
and Warner. Wodell was enjoined to remain at Watertown. Waterman, 
Power and Greene had escaped from the house. Power afterwards came 
in, and, denying that he had signed the letters, was dismissed. Waterman 
gave bonds to appear at the next court, and Greene was not molested. — 
" Simplicitie's Defence," R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 137, note. 



2 24 Early Rhode Islafid 

would be visited with death. Gorton strenuously 
objected to the removal of the irons from his leg 
on the degrading terms announced, but no atten- 
tion was paid to him. It doubtless would have 
given him satisfaction to drag his chains through 
the various settlements from Boston to Narragan- 
sett Bay, pointing to them as eloquent witnesses 
of the persecuting tyranny of the Puritans ; but the 
Puritans were too wise to add anything further 
to the titles as martyr which Gorton already so 
lavishly possessed. 

Quitting Boston, Charlestown, and the other 
towns of their imprisonment, the members of the 
Shawomet company made their way to Aquidneck, 
the only spot within reach out of which they had 
not been banished by Massachusetts. On their 
way, however, they stopped for one night amid the 
ruins of their former habitations, and there (March 
26, 1644) penned a note to the government of the 
Bay, asking whether they were to understand that 
Shawomet was one of the places interdicted to 
them. An answer was soon received, stating that 
Shawomet was one of the places, and that the 
court's order was not meant as a " scare-crow," but 
as real and effectual ; as they would discover, 
should they presume to transgress it. 

At Portsmouth upon Aquidneck the Gortonists 
were joyfully received.^ They would not have 
been so joyfully received at Newport where the 
Coddington or aristocratic element was strongest. 

' Morton's N. England's Manorial, quoted by Deane, N. Eng. Hist, 
and Gen. Reg., July 2, 1850. 



The Harrying of the Gorto7iists 225 

But Portsmouth was democratic : there Gorton 
had once been a citizen ; there he had enHsted 
most of his followers ; there, too, had been the 
home of Anne Hutchinson, with whom he had col- 
laborated, and with whom he had joined in opposing 
the union with Newport. Aquidneck as a whole, 
or rather Aquidneck as represented in its govern- 
ment, had, it is true, dealt severely with the Gor- 
tonists as eccentric and troublesome inhabitants. 
But with them as refugees from the Puritan 
Theocracy, as martyrs with the very crowns of 
thorns upon their heads, the government could 
deal only in long suffering, and so it did. 

From the standpoint of the moment, how com- 
pletely successful had been the strategy of the 
Arnolds! The overlordship of Miantonomi, as to 
Shawomet and Pawtuxet, had been superseded by 
that of Massachusetts, and the material fortunes of 
the conspirators seemed to have been made thereby.^ 
Massachusetts itself, moreover, had been en- 
abled to gratify the wish, long cherished, of — as 

■ Later on, the Arnold coterie tried the legal effect of their purchase from 
Sacononoco by a suit in the Massachusetts Court against their co-proprietor 
of Pawtuxet, William Harris, but not with the hoped-for result. The 
trial took place, July 31, 1650, and stands thus entered upon the Suffolk 
County records: "Robert Cole and William Carpenter plff. against 
William Harris in an action of trespass upon their land and for a piece of 
marsh purchased of Sacononoco. William Arnold confessed that Harris 
did pay his part of the purchase. The Court ordered there should be a 
division of the Land. Jury find for the defendant," etc. Harris, himself, 
commenting upon the trial, said ; " And then [the Arnold coterie] got one 
Sarononoco to submit himself and Land to the English & then made a 
pretended purchase of Sarononoco of that Land which they with us had 
paid for divided and held by the Narragansett Sachems & summoned me 
to appear at Boston to answer their Demand, where I found of the most 
very good Justice, but most especially of Mr. Dudley then Governor 

VOL. I. — 15. 



226 Early Rhode Island 

Winthrop has it — " drawing in the rest in those 
parts who now Hved under no government, but 
grew very offensive." Nor had the Bay Govern- 
ment — with that keen eye to windward for which 
New England has ever been distinguished — found 
it anything to be regretted that, " the rest in those 

whose ears could so try words (inspiritively) that he without any witness 
told my adversary he doubted his case was naught, which my adversary 
Confessed." — R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. i., p. 203, 

And in May, 1708, Howlong Harris, the daughter of William Harris, 
wrote as follows to the Rhode Island General Assembly at Newport : 
" Mr. Arnold and his son in law Rodes bought the meddows and lands 
upon pautuxe River on the west side of Pachaset Rive over again of the 
Indians after a Mr. Roger Williams had purchased them of the Indian 
Sachims. Old Mr. William Arnold and Mr. William Carpenter and their 
associates had subjected them selves to Boston Goverment. In them times 
sd Mr. Arnold and Mr. Carpenter maid complaint to Governour endecote 
[Dudley] of Boston that William Harris was settled down upon their land. 
Governour endecote summoned my father down to Boston to answer to 
the complaint. ... I heard my father say he informed Governour endecot 
and the court that he, father himself, was one of the purchasers of the 
Town Ship of Providence. . . . Governour Endecott poyntted out his finger 
at William Arnold and said, is it so, old man ? is it so ? and Mr. Arnold 
and Mr. Carpenter hanged down their heads and made no answer." — B. I. 
Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. iv., pp. 195, 196. 

But it has been suggested that the Arnold coterie, or at least William 
Arnold, tried means for obtaining possession of Pawtuxet far more des- 
perate than bringing suit in Massachusetts under the act of submission by 
Pumham and Sacononoco. Sometime prior to 1650, the original deed to 
Roger W^illiams — the town evidence — had been entrusted to the hands of 
William Arnold. On May 4, 1650, in a suit by William Field against 
Arnold, the fact came out that the town evidence, either through accident 
or by design, had suffered mutilation. The part embracing the Pawtuxet 
purchase had disappeared as though cut or torn away, and the edges of the 
paper above and below this part had been neatly brought together. Field 
drew the inference that the mutilation was wilful, and for the purpose of 
destroying all evidence that the Pawtuxet lands were embraced in the con- 
veyance to Williams by the sachems. Thus in a letter to the Massachusetts 
magistrates, written by Field subsequent to 1650, the following language 
is used: "Now sirs I conceive this William Arnold to obtaine his owne 
ends to deprive us of our wright of ye said lands of Pautuxet, that we 
might have nothing to show for it as indeed it was often thrown to us by 



The Ha7'ryi7ig of the Gortonists 227 

parts" once " drawn in," " the place" (to quote from 
Winthrop again) " was likely to be of use to us . . . 
for an outlet into Narragansett Bay." ^ But with 
regard to the way in which the " drawing in " had 
been effected, whatever the opinion of that day 
may have been, the opinion of this heartily en- 
dorses the firm statement of Mr. Charles Deane 
(himself of Massachusetts), that it was " atrocious " ; 
and also the statement of the Enpflish historian of 
New England, Mr. J. A. Doyle, that by it the truth 
is made plain that "the New England Puritan had 
indulged his desire to force his own profession of 

some what have we to show for it — there is nothing in the evidence wee 
little thinking wee had beene so served. Cunningly cut out or otherwise 
got out of the said Evidence all concerning the said ourwright of Pautuxet 
and pasted the said writing together againe so cunningly that it could 
hardly bee [observed] but by those who well know by Roate what was 
formerly in ye Evidence but it so happeneth that by Gods providence there 
is a copy or two of his owne hand writing (which I conceive he had forgot) 
to bee seene which compared with the deformed Evidence doth fully de- 
monstrate his naughty and evill intent." — Prov. City Hall Papers, No. oizgj. 

Arnold's explanation of the mutilation — made on three several occasions 
— was that " his Wife had given [the paper] with garden Seeds to some of 
providence and so it was Torn" {R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol, i., p. 
205; Prov. Pec, vol. xv., p. 30, vol. iv., p. 70). There is, it must be con- 
fessed, but little in the character of William Arnold to lead to a ready ac- 
ceptance of this explanation. But the circumstance (alluded to by Field) 
that Arnold himself had made copies of the town evidence, copies which 
contained the Pawtuxet grant, and that these had been allowed to go out of 
his possession (William Harris and Thos. Olney, Sr., each had one — R. I. 
Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. i., p. 205), renders it, I think, improbable on 
the whole that the mutilation was wilful. 

' It is the pertinent observation of Mr. Sydney Howard Gay {Hist. U. S., 
vol. ii., p. 72), that " the good Governor who was so apt with Scriptural 
illustration might have been reminded of the narrative in which it is related 
how Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard which was in Jezreel hard by 
the palace of Ahab of Samaria. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, 
' Give me thy vineyard that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is 
near unto 7?ty house.'' " 



228 Early Rhode Isla7id 

faith on his fellow-man till it had become a morbid 
and overwhelming passion."^ 

We thus reach the end of our narration of the sec- 
ond of those two occurrences which rendered mem- 
orable in America the period of Roger Williams's 
first absence in the mother country. Williams 
arrived at Boston in September, 1644. Protected 
by a safe-conduct from the Earl of Warwick, head 
of the Commission for Foreign Plantations, he 
was enabled to pass through Massachusetts ~ to 
Seekonk — the spot of his first planting. Here 
he was met by a flotilla of fourteen canoes, and, as 
the procurer and bearer of the patent of civil in- 
corporation for Providence Plantations, was es- 
corted in miniature triumph to the shores of the 
new commonwealth.'^ 

After the great apostle of Toleration left England, 

' The Eng. Cols, in A?7ierica, vol. ii., p. 245. 

' "Upon the receipt of the said letter [the safe-conduct] the Governor and 
the Magistrates of the Massachusetts found upon examination of their hearts 
they saw no reason to condemn themselves for any former proceedings 
against Mr. Williams ; but for any offices of Christian love and duties of 
humanity they were very willing to maintain a mutual correspondency 
with him. But as to his dangerous principles of separation unless he can 
be brought to lay them down they see no reason why to concede to him or 
any so persuaded free liberty of ingress and egress, lest any of their people 
should be drawn away with his erroneous opinions." — Hubbard in Mass. 
Hist. Coll., 2d ser., vol. vi., p. 349. 

In 1676 (March 31st), the Massachusetts General Court so far relaxed the 
rigor of the decree of banishment against Williams as to pass an order that if 
the exile should see cause and desire it, he should have liberty " to repair into 
any of our towns during these public troubles [Philip's War] he behaving 
himself peaceably and inoffensively and not disseminating and venting any 
of his different opinions in matters of religion to the dissatisfaction of any." 
— Acts Commrs. United Cols,, vol. ii., Introduction, 

^ Letter by Richard Scott printed as an appendix to Fox's Fire Brand 
Quenched. 



The Harrying of the Gortonists 229 

the detonation of his bold utterances in the Bloody 
Tenet was for some months audible. It was audi- 
ble in the resolution by the House of Commons, in 
August, that " Mr. White do give order for the 
public burning of one Mr. Williams his book . . . 
concerning the Toleration of all sorts of Relig- 
ion."^ It was audible in the counter-stroke by 
Cromwell in September, whereby the same House 
resolved to refer to the " Committee of Both King- 
doms " " the accommodation or toleration of the 
Independents," — a proceeding which fairly took 
the good Baillie off his feet, as is made evident by 
his allusion to it as " high and unexpected." And 
once more it was audible in Dr. Daniel Featly's 
reprobation (in his Dippers Dipt) of " the book 
called the Bloody Tenet" as filled with "most 
damnable doctrines tending to carnal liberty." But 
in some respects the most detonating stroke for 
Soul Liberty made either in Old or New England 
in these famous years, 1643 and 1644, was the defi- 
ance of the Massachusetts Theocracy by the Gor- 
tonists of Shawomet, — a defiance none the less 
effectual that (as Edward Winslow no doubt truly 
states in excerpting from the letters in which it was 
contained) the Gortonian " orthography was so bad " 
it had to be left "to be corrected by the printer."^ 

' " Where was the younger Sir Henry Vane ?" asks Professor Masson, in 
view of this action by the House. " Probably he was in the House while 
they passed the order and wondering how far Roger Williams had got on his 
voyage and meditatively twirling his thumbs." — Life of Milton,vo\. iii., p. 162. 

* Gorton's own orthography was not always unexceptionable, but his chi- 
rography was. A more regular or more beautiful hand is seldom to be 
seen. Specimens are preserved in the R. I, Hist. Soc. Cabinet, the J. 
Carter Brown Library, and Prov. City Hall. 



Political Individualism Granted Large Rec- 
ognition in the First Rhode Island Consti- 
tution, but Sought to be Checked in its 
Advance by William Coddington 



231 



CHAPTER VIII 

ORGANIZATION OF PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS AND 
DEATH OF CANONICUS 

AS we have seen in the last chapter, Gorton 
and his company were hospitably received 
at Portsmouth after their return, in March, 
1644, from chains and slavery in Massachusetts. 
To use Gorton's own words, " we were permitted 
to hire houses and grounds to plant upon for the 
preservation of our families." 

But hardly had they established themselves when 
a message was brought that their presence was 
desired by the great sachem Canonicus. The 
Narragansetts, it seems, had been close observers 
of what had befallen the Gortonists during the 
autumn and winter preceding. They had heard 
the discharges of musketry that betokened the 
assault upon the log house ; had been told of the 
capture of the inmates, and of the cruelties in- 
flicted upon them by the Puritans. All this, too, 
they had perfectly comprehended, for it was in ac- 
cordance with Indian custom. But now something 
had occurred which was not in accordance with In- 
dian custom, and which they did not comprehend, 

233 



234 Early Rhode Island 

The captives, after torture, had been released 
instead of being put to death. What could this 
mean? To the Indian it could mean only one 
thing : the tribe in England to which the Gorton- 
ists (Gortonoges) belonged must — for the Narra- 
gansetts had heard of fighting in England — have 
gained the victory over the tribe to which the 
Puritans (Wattaconoges or Englishmen) belonged, 
a circumstance which had inspired the Wattacon- 
oges with a wholesome respect for their captives. 
If this were true, it might signify much to the 
Narragansetts themselves ; for was it not the 
Wattaconoges in America who had put to death 
the beloved Miantonomi whom the Gortonoges 
had befriended ? So it was decided to send for 
the Professor of Christian Mysteries and his fol- 
lowers, and obtain light. 

Just where Canonicus awaited the party from 
Portsmouth — whether near Wickford, or on Co- 
nanicut Island — we do not know, but they were re- 
ceived by an armed guard and ushered before the 
patriarch amid joyous demonstrations. Next they 
met Pessicus — the brother and political successor of 
Miantonomi — at his house, and were detained in 
long consultation with " divers Sachems and chief 
counsellors." The latter told us, says Gorton, that 
" they thought we belonged to a better Master than 
the Massachusetts did." Summoning, therefore, a 
grand assembly of their nation, " they concluded 
with joint and unanimous consent to become sub- 
jects to the State and Government of Old Eng- 
land." 



Orga^iizatzon of Providejice Plantations 235 

The practice of securing the protection of a 
superior power by voluntary submission thereto 
had by this time become quite the fashion in New 
England. Massachusetts, in 1641, had given the 
cue in the case of the thirteen Providence complain- 
ants. This the Arnold coterie had been the first to 
take ; and afterwards, through the influence of the 
Arnolds, it had been shrewdly taken by the princes, 
Pumham and Sacononoco. It was now the oppor- 
tunity of the Narragansetts to take it, and they did 
so in a way that reflects the highest credit upon 
their sagacity. The suggestion has indeed been 
made that the submission of the Narraeansetts was 
the work of Samuel Gorton ; but it was by no 
means too shrewd a piece of statecraft for old 
Canonicus ; and, however much Gorton may have 
aided in its furtherance, its inception was probably 
Indian. Be that as it may, the act in the sequel 
proved to be of controlling importance for Rhode 
Island. In the capable hands of Randall Holden 
and John Greene it saved to the commonwealth — 
as we shall see in Chapter XV. — the rich province 
of Narragansett. 

The deed of submission, bearing date April 19th, 
was signed by Pessicus and Canonicus, and by 
Mixan, son of Canonicus. It recites that the 
signers, together with all their people and subjects, 
voluntarily subject themselves and their possessions 

" unto the protection and government of that worthy and 
royal Prince, Charles King of Great Britain and Ireland, to 
be ruled ordered and disposed of according to his Princely 
wisdom, and laws of that honorable State of Old England, 



236 Early Rhode Island 

upon condition of his Majesty's royal protection and righting 
of us in what wrong is or may be done unto us. Nor^' con- 
tinues the instrument, " can we yield over ourselves unto any that 
are subjects themselves in any case, having ourselves been the 
chief Sachems or Princes successively of the country time out 
of mind." 

In conclusion, Samuel Gorton, John Wickes, Ran- 
dall Holden, and John Warner are deputed "for 
the acting and performing of the deed," and for its 
" safe custody and careful conveyance " unto his 
Majesty, the King.^ 

Shortly after the execution of the deed in ques- 
tion, the Narragansett sachems were summoned to 
appear before the Massachusetts General Court to 
explain their course in preparing (as was rumored) 
to revenge upon Uncas the death of Miantonomi. 
In reply, the sachems sent word that they and their 
people were plunged in grief over the loss of their 
late ruler, and, besides, had subjected themselves 
to King Charles, wherefore they hoped it would 
not be taken ill though they resolved " to keep at 
home." Massachusetts was nettled at this lan- 
guage, and sent two commissioners to the Narragan- 
setts to ask " by whose advice they had done as 
they wrote, and why they would countenance and 
take counsel from such evil men, and such as we 
had banished from us." The reception accorded 
the commissioners was both literally and diplomat- 
ically cool in the extreme. They were left for two 
hours standing in the rain before the closed tent of 
Canonicus, and when at last admitted to an au- 

> R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 158. 



Organization of Providence Plantations 2^y 

dience, obtained from the aged barbarian naught 
but " a few fro ward speeches." 

Meanwhile Governor Winthrop, perceiving that 
the Gortonists " still abode among the English and 
were not gone to the Dutch," wrote a private letter 
"to some in the Island " appealing to them as old- 
time members of the Boston Church " to work the 
people [as Gorton has it] to deliver us up into their 
hands again." ^ There can, I think, be no doubt 
but that the " some in the Island " to whom the 
Governor wrote were, when reduced to precise 
terms, no other than William Coddington. The 
latter was at this time by no means satisfied with 
the Aquidneck political situation, and, under an 
injunction of secrecy, was unbosoming himself in 
frequent letters to Winthrop. Thus in a commu- 
nication of date August 5, 1644, he wrote: " For 
Gorton, as he came to be of the island before I 
knew it, and is here against my mind, so shall 
he not be by me protected."^ The London 

' R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 165. 

^ Mass. Archives ii., 4, 5 (copy among R. I. Hist. Soc. Papers). The 
letter also contains these words : "I desire to hear from you, and that you 
-would bury what I write in deep silence ; for what I write I never imparted 
to any, nor would to you, had I the least doubt of your faithfulness that it 
should [not] be uttered to my prejudice." 

As late as November 11, 1646, Coddington wrote to Winthrop : " For Gor- 
ton and his company they are to me as they have ever been, their freedom of 
the island is denied, and was when I accepted the place I now bear." The 
remainder of the letter shows plainly the desire of the writer to aid Massa- 
chusetts in hindering the union of the Narragansett towns under the patent 
procured by Williams. Thus : " The Commissioners have joined them in 
the same charter tho' we maintain the government as before. To further 
that end wrote of [discrediting the Gortonists], I sent to Mr. Cotton to be di- 
rected to Mr. Elliott that requested it, what was entered upon record, under 



238 Early Rhode Island 

clothier, however, was too popular just now to 
be successfully interfered with, and Coddington's 
ill-will toward him found no chance for expression. 
In fact, in the course of this very year we find Gor- 
ton filling the position of magistrate at Portsmouth, 
and not only so, but in November he renewed his 
reputation as an agitator by heading a meeting 
" for a new disposall " of the lands formerly given 
out; "as if some [according to Elder John Brown 
of Plymouth, who was present on the occasion] 
had too much and some too little, and for no 
respect of persons, and their estates to be laid 
aside, — a most vile end."^ 

The efforts of Massachusetts, through Codding- 
ton, to get Gorton again into its power, or at least 
to get him out of New England, were supple- 
mented by an attempt to colonize Shawomet with 
good Puritans. But in this instance the scheme of 
Massachusetts was nipped in the bud by Plymouth. 
The Pilgrims detested Gorton, nor did they wholly 
love the Bay.^ When they had commended the 
Antinomian refugees to Aquidneck they, in the 

the Secretary's hand, which I do think you may do well to make use of, be- 
cause I hear it sinks most with the Earl, where they had liberty of conscience. 
. . and so in haste not doubting as occasion serves to approve myself 
yours ever." — N. Eng. Hist, and Gen. Reg., ist ser., vol. iv., p. 221. 

' Winslow's Hypocrisy Unmasked, p. 83. Very probably this meeting "for 
a new disposall of lands " was a meeting held to protest against that system 
of close corporation ownership of the common lands by which a few persons 
were able to appropriate a vast area, as at Providence, and from which 
Gorton had, as we have seen at Chapter VII., suffered so much. 

'^ " At the time of their first neighborhood there, they [Plymouth and the 
Bay] were at a distance and stood aloof one from the other as each thinking 
I am holier than thou ; the men of Plymouth coming thither from Amster- 
dam, and the other out of hot persecutions of the Bishops in Old England." 
— " Simplicitie's Defence," R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 168. 



Organization of Providence Plantations 239 

words of Elder John Brown, had had " speciall eye 
to Mr. Coddington, Mr. Brinton," etc., and not to 
such characters as now for the second time were 
creating disturbance at Portsmouth. But while this 
was true, they could hardly sit by and see the power- 
ful Bay Commonwealth absorb a tract to which its 
right was if anything less than that of Plymouth ; 
so, through Elder Brown, they proceeded to warn 
away from Shawomet both the Gortonists and 
Massachusetts.^ The warning was happy for the 
former, for it operated as a sort of stay of pro- 
ceedings until these unfortunates could go to 
England and apply for redress directly to the 
Parliament. 

Gorton, accompanied by Randall Holden and 
John Greene, set sail some time in November or 
December, 1644, and reached London in Janu- 
ary. He at once proceeded to prepare for publica- 
tion his account of the maltreatment of himself 
and followers (the Simplicities Defence), and by 
August the book was for sale by " Luke Favvne 
in Paul's Churchyard at the Sign of the Parrot." 
The next step was to secure a hearing before the 
Commissioners of Foreign Plantations. This in 
due time was effected, and by May or early June, 
1646, Randall Holden was able to take ship for 
Boston, carrying with him an order to Massachu- 
setts from the Earl of Warwick and his associates, 
that the Gortonists, 
" and all such as shall hereafter join with them, be permitted 

'^Hypocrisy Unmasked, p. 83; R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 168; Win- 
throp's yournal, ii., 252. 



240 Early Rhode Island 

freely and quietly to live and plant upon Shawomet, and such 
other parts of the said tract of land within the bounds men- 
tioned in our said charter . . . without extending your 
jurisdiction to any part thereof, or otherwise disquieting them 
in their consciences or civil peace or interrupting them in 
their possession, until such time as we shall have received 
your answer to their claim in point of title. 

The order also required Massachusetts " to suffer 
Mr. Gorton, Mr. Holden, Mr. Greene, and their, 
company, with their goods, etc., to pass through 
any port of that territory which is under your 
jurisdiction . . . without molestation, they 
demeaning themselves civilly." ^ Upon the pres- 
entation of the foregoing order by Holden, the 
indignation of the Bay magistrates waxed high, but 
they choked it down, gave the Gortonists free 
passage, and in the course of a few weeks had 
despatched Edward Winslow to appear in their 
behalf before the Parliament's commissioners. 

Winslow's efforts consisted in writing the pam- 
phlet, Hypocrisy Unmasked, in which the history 
of Gorton is minutely set forth, and in personally 
championing before the commissioners the cause of 
the Bay. All that he accomplished, however, was 
to obtain an assurance that, if it were " to fall in 
upon proof " (as he, under solemn authorization 
from Plymouth, contended) that the Shawomet 
lands lay within the Plymouth patent, this fact 
would " much alter the state of the question." But 
Winslow, although waiting a whole year, was never 
put in position by Plymouth to make it " fall in 

^ R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., pp. 195, 196. 



Organization of Providence Plantations 241 

upon proof " that the Plymouth patent extended to 
Shawomet, and has left upon record his sense of 
personal mortification and chagrin at the failure of 
the Pilgrim Colony to make good its word.' As 
for Samuel Gorton, he remained in England watch- 
ing Winslow and busying himself (" at Sister 
Staggs' " and elsewhere) ^ in his favorite work of 
elucidating the mysteries of Christ till the spring 
of 1648. He then returned to Shawomet — re- 
christened Warwick by its grateful inhabitants — 
and settled down to a life which, save for the 
Warner incident to be related in the next chapter, 
may perhaps best be characterized as one of decor- 
ous monotony. 

Following the fortunes of the Gortonists, we 
have been led up to and beyond the time when the 
organization of Providence Plantations under the 
patent — the principal topic of the present chapter 
— had begun to be effected. Still, before dealing 
with this topic, it will be well to take note of three 
things which have been passed over. 

These are : first, that on March 13, 1644, the 

^ R. I. Hist. Coll.y vol. ii., p. 205. "If I could not then answare it, 
how much lesse now after another yeare if not 18 months expiration ; but the 
will of the lord must bee done in it however I suffer in my Reputation 
heere ; to make soe great a Busier and forced to let all fall at last ; had I 
not had particulare instruction from Plymouth therein I had never stired in 
it, but I shall bee more wayre heerafter how I engage in business of that 
nature," etc. — Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii., p. 179. 

* " This I am assured of from various hands that Gorton is here in Lon- 
don and hath been for the space of some months ; and I am told also that 
he vents his opinions and exercises in some of the meetings of the sectaries, 
as that he hath exercised lately at Lamb's Church, and is very great at one 

Sister Staggs." — Gangrcena, part ii., p. 144. 
16 



242 Eaidy Rhode Island 

General Court of Aquidneck changed the name of 
the Island to the " Isle of Rhodes or Rhode 
Island"^; second, that on August 27, 1645, the 
Narragansett Indians, who had stealthily been 
wreaking vengeance upon the Mohegans for the 
death of Miantonomi, were forced by Massachusetts 
to submit to a fine of two thousand fathoms of 
wampum; and third, that on February 9, 1645-46, 
an important economic step was taken at Provi- 
dence by the admission into the circle of the pro- 
prietory class, or corporation, of such persons 
otherwise acceptable as were able to purchase a 
one-fourth interest in the monopoly. These pur- 
chasers were called " quarter-rights " or " twenty- 
five-acre men," and were received on the express 

^ Just what led the people of the Island to adopt the name " Rhode 
Island or Isle of Rhodes," is an interesting question. Two opinions have 
found advocates : one that they had in mind a paragraph from Hakluyt's 
Voyages, printed in London in 1582, and reprinted in 1600, describing 
Verrazano's sojourn in Narragansett Bay in 1524, in which these words 
occur : " We weied ancker, and sayled towards the East, for so the coast 
trended, and so always for 50 leagues being in the sight thereof, we discov- 
ered an Ilande in forme of a triangle distant from the maine lande three 
leagues about the bigness of the Ilande of the Rhodes," etc. The other 
opinion is that what the Aquidneck legislators of 1644 were influenced by, 
was the fact that Adrian Block, who visited Narragansett Bay in 1614, 
noted in his ship's log, or in the journal of his voyage which afterwards 
fell into the hands of the Dutch writer, De Laet, that " in this bay there is 
to be found a little red Island [Roode Eylandt]." 

The second of these two opinions is that which has commended itself to 
the historians Bancroft and Arnold, but Mr. Sidney S. Rider may, I think, 
fairly be judged to have settled the question in favor of the first, by show- 
ing not only that the earliest Dutch map bearing the name Roode Eylandt 
was not issued till fifteen years after the people of Aquidneck had adopted 
the name Rhode Island, but that Roger Williams, writing in 1666, re- 
marks, " Rhode Island, like the Isle of Rhodes, in the Greek language, is 
an island of Roses." — Book Notes, vol. vii. , p. 28; R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub.y 
n. s., vol. viii., p. 152. 



Organizatio7i of Provide^ice Plafitations 243 

condition that while they were to enjoy " twenty- 
five acres of land apiece, with right of commoning 
according to the said proportion of land," they 
were to sit very low at the proprietary board, yield- 
ing "active and passive obedience (thankfully) " to 
the authority of the charter and to the Providence 
town meeting, and " not to claim any right to the 
purchase of the said Plantations, nor any privilege 
of vote in the town affairs," until they were ac- 
corded the status of freemen.^ 
But now to our principal topic. 

On the 19th of May, 1647, the people of 
Providence, Warwick, Portsmouth, and Newport 
met in general convention in the town of Ports- 
mouth for the purpose of creating and putting 
in operation a government in accordance with the 
terms of the patent brought from England by Roger 
Williams in 1644. It had been slow work getting 
the Aquidneck towns to join with those of the 
Mainland for this end. As indicated in Chapter 
IV,, the Mainland and the Island — or, perhaps 

' Prov. Rec, vol. ii., p. 29. Just when the quarter-rights men were per- 
mitted to take rank as voters, does not appear. It probably was soon 
after the time (June 2, 1656) when the order was made that " all inhabi- 
tants, though not as yet accounted freemen, shall be liable to be chosen to 
doe service in this towne " ; for Roger Williams remarks in 1678 that 
" these 25 acre men encreasing, the purchasers called upon them to doe 
service ; they did so, and thereby came to privilege of equall ordering 
of all towne affairs" {Ibid., p. 94). On May 15, 1658, it was ordered 
that "all those that enjoy lands in the jurisdiction of this town are 
freemen." — Ibid., p. 112 ; Ji. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n, s., vol, viii., p. 
158. 

That the exclusiveness of the town fellowship was even thus modified 
was due to the intelligence of William Harris, — Letter of Roger Williams 
to John Whipple, Rider's Hist. Tract No. 14, p. 26, 



244 Early Rhode Island 

more accurately, Providence and Newport — stood 
respectively for ideas which if not antagonistic were 
at least by no means thoroughly compatible, — the 
ideas, that is to say, of liberty and or A^r, of freedom 
and law. *' How," remarks the Simple Cobbler of 
Agawam in a much-quoted passage, " all Religions 
should enjoy their liberty. Justice its due regularity. 
Civil cohabitation, moral honesty, in one and the 
same Jurisdiction, is beyond the Artique of my 
comprehension " ; and, with the thought of a union 
with Providence in mind, the same thing evidently 
was beyond the " artique " of the comprehension 
of Newport. 

Nor was the latter to be blamed. At the outset, 
Roger Williams had frankly confessed to Winthrop 
that the face of magistracy did not suit with the 
existing condition of Providence ; and that the 
magisterial face was still not very welcome thirty 
years later may be gathered from Williams's 
statement then made, that " some are agst. all 
Govermt. and Charters and Corporacions." ^ The 
ill-concealed disgust of the high-bred Coddington 
and his friends at the proposed mesalliance may 
better be imagined than described. Only two con- 
siderations prevented their active and open hos- 
tility, — fear of internal agitators like Gorton," and 
of external absorbants like Massachusetts. 

* i?. /. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. viii., p. 148. 

' "Mr. Coddington, Mr. Brinton, etc., abhorred their [the Gortonists'] 
course . . . looked upon themselves as persons in great danger and be- 
moaned their condition to divers their friends, being now overwhelmed with 
cares and fears what would be the issue of things." — Elder John Brown, 
Hypocrisy Unmasked, p. 83. 



Organization of Providence Plantations 245 

The General Assembly of May 19th was proba- 
bly a Landsgemeinde ^ rather than a body of repre- 
sentatives, although Providence, to make sure of a 
fitting attendance on its part, sent ten delegates, 
of whom Roger Williams was one. The instruc- 
tions furnished these delegates were (i) that they 
were to make known the wish of Providence "to 
be governed by the Lawes of England, so farr as 
the nature and Constitution of this plantation will 
admittee," and to this end " to hold a Correspond- 
encye with the whole Colnye in that Modell that 
hath been lately shewed unto us by our worthy 
ffriends of the Hand " ; and (2) that they were to 
make known the wish of Providence " to have full 
power and authoritye to transacte all our home 
affaires."^ John Coggeshall was chosen moderator 
of the Assembly, which, after despatching a great 
amount of business, including the adoption, for the 
whole body, of the second instruction to the Provi- 
dence delegates, adjourned on May 21st. A year 
later (May 16, 1648) the Landsgemeinde met 
again, — this time at Providence under the presi- 
dency of Nicholas Easton ; and on May 22, 
1649, ^^^ May 23, 1650, further sessions were 
held. But at the last session an act was passed 
creating a General Court of representatives as a 
substitute for the Landsgemeinde, and this court 
convened on the 26th of October. 



' " The major parte of the Colonie was present " ; " the next Generall As- 
semblie of all the people." — Laws of 1647, R. I. Col. Hec, vol. i., pp. 

147, 149- 
^ Prov, Rec, vol. xv., p. 10. 



246 Early Rhode Island 

The three Landss^emeinde assembHes and the 
representative assembly just mentioned may be re- 
garded for present purposes as — subject to the 
patent^ — one grand constitutional and legislative 
convention, the results of the deliberations of which 
are to be considered together. These results, 
taken in their logical order, were, first, a govern- 
ment consisting of departments legislative, execu- 
tive, and judicial ; and second, a body of acts and 
laws to be put in operation through the medium of 
this government.^ 

As preliminary to defining the nature and scope 
of the various governmental powers, the convention 
defined to some extent its own territorial jurisdic- 
tion by voting that Warwick — which, consistently 
with its founder's views regarding squatter rights, 
had heretofore attempted no political organization 
— " should have the same privileges as Provi- 
dence," although not named or alluded to in the 
charter; and by voting further, that Newport 
should take into custody the trading house or 
houses of the Narragansett Bay, that Portsmouth 
should take into custody Prudence Island, and that 
Pawtuxet be left to choose whether it would come 
under the authority of Providence, Portsmouth, or 
Newport. A further preliminary step consisted in 
declaring that " the forme of Government estab- 
lished in Providence Plantations is Democraticall," 



' The only restriction imposed by the patent was that " the laws etc. be 
conformable to the laws of England so far as the nature and constitution of 
the place will admit." — R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p, 261. 

^i?. /. Col. Rec, vol. i., pp. 147-234. 



Organization of Providence Plantations 247 

and in adopting a Bill of Rights the leading pro- 
nouncements of which were (i) — following Mag?ta 
Charta — that " no person shall be taken or im- 
prisoned or disseized of his Lands or Liberties, or 
be Exiled . . . but by the Lawful judgment 
of his Peeres, or by some known Law ... of 
the Generall Assemblie " ; and (2) that " no person 
shall presume to beare any office that is not law- 
fully called to it," nor, when so called, " to doe more 
or less than those that had powre to call him." 

The branch of orovernment first recognized and 
defined in exercise by our convention was the legis- 
lative. This involved, besides a Landsgemeinde, 
two elements : a town and General Court initiative, 
and a town referendum.^ That is to say, in the in- 
tervals between sessions of the Landsgemeinde, any 
town might discuss and vote upon a measure for the 
colony, transmitting to each of the other towns a 
record of its action ; whereupon these towns, in turn, 
were to discuss and vote upon the measure. The 
measure, together with the vote of the towns, was 
then to be submitted to a committee of six from 
each town, called the General Court, by whom the 
result of the vote was to be announced. If the re- 
sult were favorable, that is, if the measure were 
adopted by " the Major parte of the Colonie," it was 
to stand as a legal enactment until the Landsge- 
meinde met, when that body was to decide *' whether 
it were any longer to stand." Again, the General 

' Some striking parallels between Rhode Island institutions of this period 
and those of the Swiss canton of Appenzell, at a period somewhat earlier, 
■will be noticed in Chapter X. 



248 'Early Rhode Isla^id 

Court might discuss and vote upon a measure " for 
the pubHc weale " ; those in attendance from each 
town (the committee of six) reporting, upon their 
return home, the measure and vote to their town 
meeting ; whereupon the town was to confirm or 
disapprove the action of the court. The vote of 
each town, sealed up, was then to be " sent with 
speed to the Generall Recorder, who, in the presence 
of the President," was "to open the votes " ; and if 
the measure had received " the major vote," ^ it was 
" to stand as a Law till the next Generall Assemblie." 
Under the above system, the province of the 
Landsgemeinde, it will have been observed, was 
merely to accept or reject such legislation as previ- 
ously had been inaugurated by the towns in town 
meeting, or through the General Court ; and for this 
there was good reason. A national assembly, or 
Landsgemeinde, is both too cumbersome and too 
indiscriminate a body intelligently to initiate legis- 

' It is not altogether clear from the language of the record {R, I. Col. Rec, 
vol. i., pp. 148, 149) whether the towns were to vote as towns, or whether they 
were merely to collect and forward the votes of the freemen within their 
limits. If they were to vote as towns, a majority of the towns was necessary 
to pass a measure ; otherwise a majority of the freemen of the colony. Mr. 
J. A. Doyle in his English Colonies in America construes the record to mean 
that the vote of even a single town might defeat a measure (vol. ii., p. 273); 
and even Judge Thomas Durfee is of the opinion (Anniversary Oration 
Founding of Prov., p. 19) that no law could be enacted "without the consent 
of the towns." Judge Staples, on the contrary ("Annals of Prov.," R. I. Hist. 
Coll., vol. v., p. 65), takes the view that the towns merely collected and 
forwarded the votes. It is evident that the towns did not vote as units af- 
ter October, 1650, for it was then expressly provided, that " if any freemen 
mislike any law, they shall send their votes, with their names affixed thereto, 
to the Generall Recorder within ten dayes." Upon the whole, the more 
reasonable conclusion is, I am persuaded, that the towns from the first 
merely acted as agents in collecting and transmitting the votes of the freemen. 



Organization of Provideiice Plantatio7is 249 

lation ; and hence even to-day in Switzerland such 
a body rarely assumes to exercise the initiative, but 
simply accepts or rejects what is laid before it by its 
executive committee or Grosser Rat. But any diffi- 
culty in Providence Plantations incident to cumber- 
someness or indiscriminateness on the part of the 
legislature was overcome by the adoption on May 
23, 1650, of a representative system. 

The system in question provided for the selection 
by the towns of twenty-four ** discreet and able " men 
(six in each) " to have the full power of the Generall 
Assemblie." At first, a simple majority of this court 
had authority to legislate, but after October 26, 
1650, " no act of the Court was to be in force except 
there were thirteen agreeing in the vote." It was 
furthermore ordered in the session of October, 1650, 
that all laws passed by the General Court, as a 
representative body, should within six days after 
adjournment be returned to the towns, and that 
within three days after return, "the chiefe officer 
of each Towne " should call the town together to 
hear the laws read, to the end that " if any freemen 
mislike any law, they shall send their votes with 
their names affixed thereto to the Generall Re- 
corder, within ten dayes after the reading." Upon 
this, if the majority of the votes were against the 
law, it was to be a nullity, and was to be so signified 
by the President to the towns. 

At the Landsgemeinde session of May, 1650, it 
was enacted that "representatives" should be paid, 
during the time of their employment, two shillings 
and six-pence a day by their respective towns. It 



250 Early Rhode Island 

had already been enacted (May, 1647) that sessions 
of the General Assembly were to be held " upon 
the first Tuesday after the 15th of May annually, 
if wind or weather [hindered] not."^ 

The executive department of the new govern- 
ment, as organized by our constitutional convention, 
was to consist of the following general officers : 
" One President, four Assistants — in every Towne 
one, one Generall Recorder, one Publick Treasurer, 
and a Generall Sargeant." They were to be chosen 
by " papers " ^ for a term of one year ; and before 
assuming office were to " engage" — that is, solemnly 
promise — to execute their commissions "faithfully 
and truly to the utmost of their power." On the 
other hand, the whole people of the colony, at least 
during the Landsgemeinde period, were likewise to 
" engage " ^ to " support and uphold " the officers. 
The President was allowed no independent execu- 
tive power, but he and the Assistants were to be 
conservators of the peace in the towns where they 
lived, and throughout the whole colony. In case of 
the absence or death of the President, his place was 
to be taken by the Assistant of the town from which 
the President was chosen ; and (after 1649) i^ ^ 
President- or Assistant-elect should refuse to serve, 
he was, if the former, to be fined ten pounds ; and 



' On May i8, 1652, the order was made that these Courts (of Election and 
Trial) " shall bee by turns henceforth in each Towne." — Ji. I. Col. Rec, vol. 
i., p. 244. 

'^ It is worthy of remark that at Newport in 1639 sealed votes for Judge 
were provided for. — Ibid., p. g8. 

^ Reciprocal " engagements " were the practice till a late period. — Ibid., 
p. 441 ; ii., p. 98. 



Orgaitization of Pi'ovidence Plantations 251 

if the latter, five pounds ; and " he that had most 
votes next to him that refused " was to supply his 
place.* 

It was to be the duty of the general recorder to 
keep the legislative and judicial records, and the 
records of land transfers, boundaries, wills, and 
highways. The public treasurer was to receive 
" such fines, forfeitures, amercements, and taxes " 
as " fell upon " those outside " the liberties " of the 
four towns. Collection within the towns was left to 
the town treasurer. The general sergeant was to 
be "an able man of Estate" ; he was to attend the 
Court of Trials in the capacity of sheriff, and to 
keep the colony prison. Besides the foregoing 
officers, our convention (in the Landsgemeinde of 
1647) chose two *' Water Bailies," or riparian police, 
for the colony ; and (in the Landsgemeinde of May, 
1650) ordered the appointment of an " Attorney- 
and Solicitor-General," — William Dyer and Hugh 
Bewett. An act passed in 1647, providing for a 
" Seale of the Province " in the form of an anchor, 
may perhaps be regarded as putting the finishing 
touches to so much of the new government as per- 
tained to the executive. 

In its judicial branch, Providence Plantations was 
to consist in a " Generall Courte of Tryalls " com- 
posed of the President and Assistants of the colony. 
The jurisdiction of the court was to extend to such 
crimes as might " hazard Life, Limbe, Disfranchise- 
ment, or Banishment"; and to such civil cases as 

' The Coddington defection to be mentioned /t?j-^, probably led to this 
enactment. 



252 Early Rhode Island 

should be certified to it by the " Common Councill," 
of any town or towns, as "too weightie for a more 
private determining." Its jurisdiction was to ex- 
tend, furthermore, to matters of difference " between 
Towne and Towne," or between residents of differ- 
ent towns, or between a town and a resident of a 
neighboring colony. By the Landsgemeinde of 
May, 1650, the court was clothed with distinct ap- 
pellate power, for provision was made for the trans- 
fer thither from the town courts of cases wherein 
there could be shown to be ** defect in some sub- 
stantiall matter, error, orattainte." As early, how- 
ever, as 1647, it had been enacted that "in case a 
man sues for justice . . . and he cannot be 
heard, or is heard and cannot be righted by any Law 
extant among us, then shall the partie grieved peti- 
tion to the Generall or Law making Assemblie, and 
shall be relieved." This was left in force by the 
Assembly of 1650, and became the basis of that 
claim of judicial right and power afterwards so per- 
tinaciously made by the Rhode Island Legislature. 

With regard to the time of judicial sessions, it 
was ordered in 1647 that the " Court of Tryall " 
should be held immediately upon the dissolving of 
the General Court in May of each year. With re- 
gard to place, that was to be " where the action did 
arise." Later in the same session, it was ordered 
that the court "begin at Newport the 13th of June, 
and from thence to Portsmouth, and so forward if 
there be occasion." 

It was enacted in 1647, as to the general pro- 
cedure at trials, that criminals should be indicted by 



Organization of Providence Plantations 253 

twelve or sixteen " honest and lawful men." These 
men, in the event that one charged with a capital 
offence were before them, were to be " clearly worth 
forty pounds." After indictment, the accused were 
to be separately tried by a jury of twelve, who be- 
fore taking their places were to be solemnly charged 
by the President of the court, " upon the perill and 
penaltie " of the law, ** to do justice according to the 
evidence." In conclusion the President, or an Assis- 
tant, was to " mind " the jury of the " most material 
passages and arguments brought by one and other 
for the case and against it, without alteration or 
leaning," and thereupon the jury were " to goe 
forth." 

It may be well finally to note that, by the Lands- 
gemeinde of 1647, express provision was made for 
the encouragement of the legal profession in Prov- 
idence Plantations, through the order that " any 
man may, ... in any Court or before any 
Judge of Record throwout the whole Colonie, make 
his Attorney to plead for him, or may use the At- 
torneys that belong to the Court, which may be two 
in a Towne — discreet, honest, and able men for un- 
derstanding, and solemnly engaged not to use any 
manner of deceit to beguile eyther Court or partie." 

With the passage by our constitutional conven- 
tion of the acts creating legislative, executive, and 
judicial departments, the general government under 
the Patent of 1644 was reasonably complete, — com- 
plete, that is, on its positive side. But there was 
also a neg-ative side to be reckoned with. This was 



2 54 Early Rhode Island 

the side that Providence had had in view when 
instructing its deles^ates to make it known to the 
Assembly of 1647 that "We desire to have full 
power and authoritye to transacte all our home af- 
faires" ; the side, in other words, of particularism and 
separatism ; the side most characteristic of the Nar- 
raeansett settlements, as since it has been of Rhode 
Island, both colony and State. 

Accordingly, in framing the general government, 
our convention distinctly recognized the claims of 
particularism in a series of acts in the nature of ad- 
justments between the centripetal and centrifugal 
forces. Thus, if limitations were imposed upon the 
towns in the requirement that they must choose each 
a delegation of six to the General Assembly, the 
towns on their part were at liberty to choose their 
delegation in any way they saw fit. Again, if lim- 
itations were imposed upon the towns in the re- 
quirement that they promptly choose each a town 
council of six men ; that they choose militia officers, 
highway surveyors, and swine viewers, the towns on 
their part were still at liberty to exercise some con- 
trol by fixing the qualifications of the electors^ by 
whom these officers were to be chosen. If, more- 
over, there were a limitation in the power given to 
the general government to impose taxes, the towns 
made their own apportionment, and did their own 
collectinof. 

Once again, if there were a limitation in the 
appellate, and to some extent in the original juris- 

' The subject of citizenship under the Patent of 1644 will be discussed in 
Chapter X. 



Organization of Providence Plaiitatio7ts 255 

diction of the colony Court of Trials, this was 
largely offset by the provision in 1647, that the 
maoristrates of the town where the court was held 
should sit with the general magistrates " for coun- 
cill and helpe " ; and by the provision in 1649, that 
" the Town magistrates of the Town wheare the 
Generall Court shall be, shall sit in Court with the 
Generall Officers and have equall authority to vote 
and act with the Generall Officers." And finally, 
if the very existence of Providence Plantations were 
a limitation upon the Narragansett settlements, — 
as it was, — the powers reserved by the latter were 
rendered somewhat plainer and more definite by the 
declarations of the Bill of Rights, and by the grant- 
ing to Providence in 1649, as also to the other 
towns, of a charter of political incorporation. 

There are of course points of analogy between 
the government set up by the Narragansett settle- 
ments between 1647 and 1650 and the government 
set up by the United States in 1787. There also 
are points of analogy between the United States 
Government and that set up in Connecticut in 1639. 
Here, however, and with reference to Rhode Island, 
we may pause to note but two points : first, that the 
main sources whence the commonwealth of Prov- 
idence Plantations was derived (Providence and 
Aquidneck) were — in a much stricter sense than the 
sources of Connecticut, and in a sense hardly known 
in the case of the sources of the other American 
plantations — distinct and independent political sov- 
ereignties ; and second, that after the creation of 
the commonwealth on paper, it failed largely to come 



256 Early Rhode Island 

into existence as fact, reaching only about the stage 
of development reached by the United States under 
the Articles of Confederation. But of this more in 
the chapter entitled " Relation of State to Town 
in Early Rhode Island." 

We have already seen that the first two Presi- 
dents under the patent were John Coggeshall and 
Nicholas Easton, and that Roger Williams was the 
first Assistant from Providence. Easton was chosen 
President a third time in 1650, and Williams Assist- 
ant a second time in 1648, and Deputy President in 
1649. Among others of historical note chosen to 
public place during the period of organization were 
William Coddington, Assistant for Newport in 1647, 
and President in 1648 ; Randall Holden, Assistant 
for Warwick in 1647 ; William Dyer and Jeremy 
Clarke, recorder and treasurer, respectively, in 1647 
and 1648 ; Thomas Olney, Assistant for Providence 
in 1649; John Clarke, Assistant for Newport and 
general treasurer in 1649 ^"^ 1650; and Samuel 
Gorton, Assistant for Warwick in 1649. 

It is evident from these selections that the new 
government was resolved to make use of its best 
material. The selections may also be taken as in- 
dicating that while, as has been said, the particular- 
istic or analytic tendencies of the time and place 
found their natural expression through Providence, 
the integrating or synthetic tendencies were made 
manifest through Newport ; for the Presidents were 
all Newport men. But the synthetic influence of 
Newport is made more convincingly manifest in the 



Organization of Providence Plantations 257 

code called the Bulk of the Laws. This had been 
prepared in advance of the meeting of our constitu- 
tional and legislative convention in 1647, and had 
been submitted to the inspection at least of Provi- 
dence ; for the latter in its instructions to its dele- 
gates, or committee, had announced its desire, *' so 
farr as possibly may be, to hold a Correspondencye 
with the whole Colonye in that Modell that hath 
been lately shewed unto us by our worthy ffriends 
of the Hand." 

The code as a whole is noteworthy for its freedom 
from Old Testament allusions, and for its humanity. 
It is pervaded by the spirit of Christ rather than by 
that of Moses, and, indeed, begins with a fine allu- 
sion to the former as "the great Doctor of the 
Gentiles." In its various sections it covers suc- 
cinctly the leading divisions in the criminal and 
civil law of England, from high treason, rebellion, 
and murder to marriage and the probate of wills.^ 

'Judge Staples remarks in his Proceedings of the First General Assembly, 
p. 50, that under a clause in the probate law authorizing the common coun- 
cil of each town " to make an equal and just distribution of [an] estate 
among those to whom it does belong," it was not unusual at Providence and 
Warwick for the town councils to draw a paper in the form of a will, and 
thus to dispose of a decedent's estate apparently at their discretion. He 
says that in one instance (estate Nicholas Power, Prov. Rec, vol. xv., p. 
47) a part of the real and personal estate was disposed of to the widow, part 
for life and part in fee ; and the residue divided among the children as ten- 
ants in fee-tail general, with cross remainders. See Prov. Rec, vol. ii., pp. 
108, 143, for instances of the disposal of estates by the Providence town 
meeting. Attention is also called by Judge Staples to the interesting cir- 
cumstance that wills at Providence were sometimes proved at once upon 
execution. 

The absence of any local law regulating the descent of real property, 
coupled with the fact that by the terms of the Charter of 1663 all the lands 
of the colony were held by the tenure of the manor of East Greenwich in 
the County of Kent, led William Harris to the conclusion that the rule of 

VOL. I. — 17. 



258 Early Rhode Island 

Some of the sections are deserving of special at- 
tention, as, for instance, those in which the death 
penahy is Hmited to treason, murder, manslaughter, 
witchcraft,^ burglary, robbery, arson, and the crimes 
against nature, at a time when in Massachusetts, 
Plymouth, and New Haven the penalty of death 
was denounced against all such as "worship any 
God but the Lord God " ; against all such as " blas- 
pheme the name of God the Father, Son, or Holy 
Ghost, or curse God in like manner" ; against 
such, "above sixteen years old, as shall curse or 
smite their natural father or mother," or "shall 
not obey the voice of father or mother," being 
stubborn or rebellious ; and so on. 

Attention also may be paid to the section which 
exempts " poor persons that steal for hunger" from 
legal penalty ; to the section which declares against 
imprisonment for debt ; to the section which forbids 
the infliction in any event of the penalty of banish- 
ment ; to the section which permits divorce ^ only for 
adultery, and then only by order of the General 
Assembly, upon complaint of the party grieved ; 
and to the section which provides that, 
"as the Consciences of Sundry men truly conscienable may 

descent was that of gavelkind, according to which the heirs of a decedent 
took in equal portions. — William Harris Papers, R. I. Hist. Soc. ; will oi 
William Harris, R. I. Hist. Soc. 

' No prosecution for this offence was ever instituted in Rhode Island. 
Indeed, the general opinion there was probably voiced by William Arnold, 
when he wrote to Massachusetts that " some of them of Shawomet crieth 
out much against them which putteth people to death for witches ; for, say 
they, there be neither witches upon earth nor devils, but your own pastors 
and ministers, and such as they are." — Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 229. 

^ The sections relating to banishment and divorce were adopted at the 
session of October, 1650. 



Organization of Provideftce Plantations 259 

scruple the giving or the taking of an oath, and it would be 
nowise suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, 
who profess ourselves to be men of different consciences, 
. . . to debar such as cannot do so either from bearing 
ofifice among us or from giving in testimony in a case depend- 
ing, be it therefore enacted that a solemn profession or testi- 
mony in a Court of record shall be accounted, throughout the 
whole Colony, of as full force as an oath." 

Of interest, too, are the sections (mercantile 
and police in their nature) regulating the cur- 
rency by lowering by one third the legal tender value 
of black peage,^ forbidding the sale of arms to the 
Indians, adopting the " Sea Lawes or Lawes of 
Oleron,"^ imposing upon a reciprocity basis cus- 
toms duties upon Dutch and French commodities, 
and forbidding Dutch and French trade with the 
Indians, upon penalty of forfeiture of " Shipp and 
Goods." 

There are, moreover, certain sections that excite 
a smile, as the one that " common scolds be pun- 
ished with the ducking stool " ; the one that a 
drunken man refusing to pay his fine " shall be set 

' It was now valued at four shells to the penny ; the value had been three 
to the penny. 

^ The Laws of Oleron take their name from the island of Oleron, which lies 
off the west coast of France opposite the mouths of the Charente and the 
Seudre. It is probable that these laws — the embodiment of maritime usage 
— were first reduced to form by order of Eleanor, Duchess of Guienne (wife 
successively of Louis VII. of France and Henry II. of England), and that 
they were introduced into England by Richard I., who heard of them while 
en route homeward from the Holy Land. The earliest known text is con- 
tained in the Liber Memorandorum preserved in the Public Records Office, 
London, and is in a handwriting of the early fourteenth century ; it is en- 
titled La Charte d Ole'ron des Jut^gefnentz de la Mier. In 1647 — the very 
year of the adoption of the laws in question by Providence Plantations — 
Cleirac, a learned advocate in the Parliament of Bordeaux, printed Les Us 
et Coustumes de la Mer, in which these laws are embodied. 



26o Early Rhode Island 

in the stocks and there remain for the space of six 
hours " ; and the one providing that " forasmuch as 
we are cast among the archers, and know not how 
soon we may be deprived of powder and shot, 
. . . to the end also that we may come to out- 
shoot these natives in their own bow, ... be 
it enacted that every person, from the age of seven- 
teen years to the age of seventy, shall have a bow 
and four arrows and shall use and exercise shooting." 
Then at the end of the code, and consecrating it a 
living memorial, as it were, to the procurer of the 
patent, by whom alone both code and colony were 
made possible, come the fitting, memorable words : 
" These are the laws that concern all men, and these 
are the penalties for the transgression thereof, which, 
by common consent are ratified and established 
throughout the whole Colony ; and, otherwise than 
what is thus herein forbidden, all men may walk as 
their consciences persuade them, every one in the 
name of his God." 

In addition to general laws, there were passed by 
our convention at its several sessions divers acts and 
orders which pointedly disclose the conditions pre- 
vailing in the commonwealth during its formative 
time. And these conditions, it may be observed, 
were on every hand the conditions of distraction. 
Portsmouth — fresh from a rebaptism in the spirit 
and presence of Samuel Gorton — was at daggers- 
drawn with Providence, Warwick, and Newport ; 
the Arnold coterie and the newly converted Pum- 
ham and Sacononoco, all under the ample wing 



Organization of Provide7ice Plantations 261 

of Massachusetts, were still striving to make Paw- 
tuxet and Warwick a part of the County of Suffolk ; 
Providence, rent and torn, was salving its wounds 
with idle declarations that " what causes of differ- 
ence have heretofore been given ... by any 
of us here present, not to mention or repeat them 
in this assembly, but that love shall cover the mul- 
titude of them in the grave of oblivion " ; while, as 
for the colony at large, it was suffering from the 
complaint of ballot-box " stuffing," ^ from excite- 
ment over the supposed discovery of gold, and from 
a treacherous seeking on the part of William Cod- 
dington to subject the island of Rhode Island to the 
jurisdiction of the United Colonies. 

The treachery of Coddington merits more than 
passing attention. 

The Aquidneck magnate was chosen President 
by the Landsgemeinde held May 16, 1648, at 
Providence. At the same session the entry was 
officially made, that whereas " Mr. Jeremy Clarke 
and Mr. John Smith are elected and sworne" 
[engaged], " Mr, Coddington and Mr. Balston, 
Assistant from Portsmouth, are suspended." No 
grounds for the suspension are mentioned other than 
" divers bills of complaint " ; but, in view of these 
" bills," it was ordered that " if the President-elect 
shall be found guilty or, being cleared of the said 
charges, refuse the place, etc., that then ye Assis- 
tant of Newport, Mr. Jeremy Clarke, shall be 

' " It is ordered . . . that none shall bringe any voates but such as 
they receive from the voaters' hands, and that all voates presented shall be 
filed by the recorder in the presence of the Assemblie during the tyme of the 
Court." — R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 217. 



262 Early Rhode Island 

invested in his place." And shortly afterwards it 
was recited in the sfeneral act reo;-ulatina- the Presi- 
dential succession, that the President-elect " hath 
not attended this Court for ye clearing of ye accu- 
sations charged upon him." 

Now considerable light upon the course of Cod- 
dington in Rhode Island affairs, at and before this 
juncture, is thrown by one of those self-revealing 
letters of his to Governor Winthrop. Thus he 
wrote on May 25th : 

" Sir, this bearer [Captain Alexander Partridge] and Mr. 
Balston and others of this island are in disgrace with the 
people in Providence, Warwick, and Gorton's adherents on 
this island, for that we will not interpose, or meddle at all in 
their quarrels with the Massachusetts and the rest of the 
Colonies, and do much fear that Gorton will be a thorn in 
their and our sides, if the Lord prevent not."* 

The circumstance here mentioned, that Baulston 
as well as the writer of the letter was " in dis- 
grace," taken in connection with the circumstance 
that Coddington and Baulston were suspended 
from office at the same time and by the same 
order, lends at least strong color to the presump- 
tion that they both were " in disgrace " and 
" suspended " for the same thing, to-wit : giving 
countenance, information, and comfort to Massa- 
chusetts in its efforts to reduce Warwick under its 
authority. 

But if at this time the infidelity of Coddington 
was a matter merely of suspicion, it soon became 
one of certainty. In September of the year 1648, 

' Hutchinson Papers (Prince Soc. ed.), pp. 253, 254. 



Orgajiizaiio7i of Providence Plantations 26 



o 



and as a natural sequence to the correspondence 
and affiliation with Winthrop, Coddington, together 
with Partridge, petitioned the United Colonies "in 
the behalfe of R. Island, that wee the Islanders of 
Roode Hand may be received into combination with 
all the united Colonyes of New England in a firme 
and perpetuall League of friendship and amity, of 
offence and defence, Mutuall advice and succor," 
etc.; alleging that " to this our motion wee have the 
consent of the major part of our Iland."^ Hence, 
however lightly we may be disposed to touch 
upon Coddington's course with regard to Warwick, 
this act of his (unsuccessful though it proved) in 
seeking to detach Aquidneck from Providence 

' Hazard, vol. ii., p. gg. Roger Williams states in a letter to John 
Winthrop, Jr., of date September 23, 1648 : " Our neighbors Mr. Codding- 
ton and Capt. Partridge ten days since returned from Plymouth with 
propositions for Rhode Island to subject to Plymouth ; to which himself 
and Portsmouth incline ; our other three towns decline " {Narr. Club Pub., 
vol. vi., p. 154). Any inclination on the part of Portsmouth to subject the 
Island must have been limited to the Baulston element. Gorton's friends 
certainly could not have shared it. 

As a matter of fact, Coddington had applied for the admission of the 
island of Rhode Island into the New England Confederation in August or 
September, 1644. His intention to take some such step is plainly intimated 
in that very confidential letter to Winthrop in part quoted ante. He says 
(August 5th) : "I desire to have either such alliance with yourselves or Ply- 
mouth, one or both as might be safe for us all, I having chief interest on 
this island, it being bought to me and my friends ; and how inconvenient it 
might be if it were possessed by an enemy, lying in the heart of the plan- 
tations, and convenient for shipping, I cannot but see ; but I want both 
counsel and strength to effect what I desire." The response of the Con- 
federation (September 9, 1644, Hazard, vol. ii., p. 20) was that "if the 
major part and such as have most interest in the Hand will absolutely and 
without reservation submit, either the Massachusetts or Plymouth may re- 
ceive them." 

The foregoing correspondence was still a secret at the time of Codding- 
ton's second application — that of 164S. 



264 Early Rhode Island 

Plantations raises peremptorily the question how 
far, if at all, he may be regarded as justified. 

It probably can be urged with truth that, as Dr. 
Palfrey says, Coddington "was altogether dissatis- 
fied with the proceedings which, under the patent ob- 
tained by Williams, had been had for a junction of 
the towns under one government." It may even, I 
think, be truthfully urged that the former honestly 
feared for the safety of life and security of property 
under the new regime, and that he had never yielded 
to it more than a passive allegiance. But the fact 
none the less remains that, willingly or unwillingly, 
Coddington and his party had with perfect regu- 
larity, and by their actual sovereign, — the state of 
Old England, — been placed under the jurisdiction 
of Providence Plantations, and that therefore this 
attempt to dismember the territory of the common- 
wealth was, in the eye of both law and politics, 
nothing short of treasonable. 

But during these distempers, — mirrored with 
more or less completeness in the acts and orders 
we have been considering, — what of Roger 
Williams ? 

Almost immediately upon his return with the 
patent in September, 1644, he had betaken himself 
to Cawcamsqussick, near the present Wickford, 
and opened a trading house. His trip to England 
had cost him one hundred pounds and reimburse- 
ment was yet to be offered him.^ He, therefore, — to 

'In 1647 the General Assembly voted that "in regard of his so great 
travail, charges and good endeavours we do freely give and grant to the said 



Organization of Providence Plantations 265 

say naught of the fact that he was always more 
at home on the outskirts of even a frontier settle- 
ment than anywhere else, — was in need of 
money and had to go to work. But although 
removed from Providence, he maintained a con- 
stant interest in the affairs of the colony. He 
poured forth a stream of letters to his friends, 
— in particular to his friend John Winthrop, 
Jr., — and found time besides (August 31, 1648) 
eloquently to appeal to the town of Providence to 
aid him in putting into effect a scheme of arbitra- 
tion for determining the difference with Ports- 
mouth^; and (September 23, 1648) to "sound" 
Winthrop regarding his willingness to serve as an 
arbitrator in the issue raised by the defection of 
Coddington.^ Indeed, about this time, and no 
doubt largely because of the uncertain condition of 
local affairs, Williams began seriously to think of 
Winthrop as a possible President for Providence 
Plantations — that is, in the event that the latter 
should establish himself at Pawcatuck [Stoning- 
ton], where he had already planted an outpost.^ 
Moreover, it was in 1649 that, at a special session 

Roger Williams one hundred pounds . . . to be levied and paid in by 
the last of November next" {R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 152). In fact pay- 
ment, even in part, was not made till long after the time here indicated. 

' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 149. 

^ Ibid., p. 154. 

^Williams wrote to Winthrop, March, 1648-49, as follows: "Whether 
they have fixed on yourself [for President] or Mr. Coddington's faction 
prevail to keep his name in ... I cannot yet learn " ; and again on 
May 26th : " Some were bold [at the Court of Election] to use your name 
and generally applauded and earnestly desired in case of any possible 
stretching our bounds to you or your drawing near to us though but to 
Pawcatuck." — Ibid., pp. 170, 180. 



266 Early Rhode Island 

of the General Assembly held in March, Williams, 
in recognition of his efforts for internal harmony, 
was chosen Deputy President.^ 

But, upon the whole, the most important event 
connected with the sojourn of Roger Williams at 
Cawcamsqussick was the death of Canonicus.^ 
" On a June day in 1647," says Mr. Dorr, " the last 
real King of the Narragansetts was laid to rest" 
Williams himself closed the eyes of the dead chief- 
tain, and provided the shroud of trading cloth in 
which the body was wrapped.^ " No trustworthy 
tradition," again to quote from Mr. Dorr, " marks 
the old Sachem's grave. If the spot were known, 
it would be worthy of a monument commemorative 
of his faithful service." Heartily may we second 
these words of appreciation, for, with the melting 
of the snows of those aged locks, there presently 
was to come a flood. 

' The only account we have of this Assembly is contained in Williams's 
letter to Winthrop {JVarr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 170) in which he says: 
" This Court last week wrote to me information of their choice of myself 
as Deputy President in the absence of the President." 

^ On June 4th, Winthrop wrote in his yournal : " Canonicus, the great 
Sachem of Narragansett, died, a very old man." On October 5, 1654, 
Roger Williams wrote to the Massachusetts General Court : " Their late 
famous long-lived Canonicus so lived and died, and in the same most 
honorable manner and solemnity, in their way, as you laid to sleep [in 1649] 
your prudent peace-maker, Mr. Winthrop, did they honor this their 
prudent and peaceable prince." — Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 274. 

^ R. I. Hist. Soc, Pub., n. s. , vol. viii., p. 157 ; Rider's Hist. Tract 
No. 14, p. 57. 



END OF VOLUME I. 



Territorial Growth of Rhode Island, 
1636- 1683. 

I. Providence Plantatioos, 1636- 1638. Chapters IV.. XW. 
3. Island of Aquidneck, 1638. Chapter IV., Part U. 

3. Warwick, 1643- Chapter IV. Potowomut Neck claimed by 
Warwick under grant from Indians in 1654. 

4. Peiliquamscutt, 1657. Quidnessett and Namcook, 1659. 
R. I. - Conn. Controversy, 1659. Kingstown erected, 1674, 
Chapter XV. 

5. Misquaraicutt, 1660. Chapter XV. 

6. Block Island, 1664. Chapter XII. 

7. East Greenwich. 1677. Chapter XV. 




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